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MEN,  WOMEN 
&  MANNERS 
IN  COLONIAL 
TIMES  •  -  -  - 

BY 
SYDNEY  GEO.  FISHER 

ILLUSTRATED     WITH      PHOTOGRAVURES 

AND    WITH    DECORATIONS    BY 
EDWARD     STRATTON     HOLLOWAY 

VOL.    I 


PHILADELPHIA    fcf    LONDON 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT   COMPANY 

i  898 


COPYRIGHT,  1897 

BY 
J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 


'AV  Hertford ,  Coi\t\. 


PREFACE 

E  charm  of  a  journey  through  the  colonies 
was  its  variety.  In  travelling  from  Massa 
chusetts  to  the  Carolinas  one  passed  through 
communities  of  such  distinct  individuality  that 
they  were  almost  like  different  nations.  Each 
had  been  founded  for  a  reason  and  purpose  of 
its  own.  Each  had  a  set  of  opinions  and  laws 
peculiar  to  itself,  and  it  was  not  uncommon  to 
find  the  laws  and  opinions  of  one  a  contradiction 
to  those  of  another. 

They  were  a  strange  and  picturesque  collec 
tion  of  settlements  on  the  extreme  eastern  verge 
of  a  vast  continent ;  a  mere  fringe  along  the  sea- 
coast  from  Georgia  to  New  Hampshire.  Most 
of  the  people  lived  close  to  the  shore,  and  all 
were  within  two  hundred  miles  of  it.  Behind 
them  stretched  the  great  unknown  continent, 
which  for  a  thousand  miles  was  nothing  but 
trees, — a  vast  forest  that  seemed  to  them  inter- 
5 


Preface 

minable,  for  they  did  not  know  that  beyond  it 
were  the  open  prairies  with  their  long  grass  and 
herds  of  buffalo  stretching  to  the  Mississippi, 
and  beyond  that  the  plains,  the  desert,  and  the 
Rocky  Mountains. 

The  wild  fowl  that  every  autumn  came  to 
them  in  countless  millions  from  Alaska  could 
have  told  them  all ;  and  now  we  know  what  the 
canvas-back  and  the  mallard  have  always  known. 
But  we  must  be  careful  not  to  think  ourselves  on 
that  account  the  superiors  of  the  colonists.  We 
have  at  our  command  more  fafts  and  more  mate 
rial  wealth,  but  it  is  a  question  whether  we  are 
any  wiser  or  better  than  the  fathers ;  and  it  is 
extremely  doubtful  whether  we  enjoy  ourselves 
as  much  as  they  did,  when,  in  their  scarlet 
cloaks,  yellow  waistcoats,  and  abundant  leisure 
and  room,  they  ornamented  the  Atlantic  sea 
board,  with  the  continent  behind  them. 

Those  were  brave  days  when  the  judges  on 
the  bench  wore  scarlet  robes  faced  with  black  ; 
when  the  tailor-shops,  instead  of  the  dull-col 
ored  woollens  which  they  now  contain,  adver 
tised,  as  in  the  New  York  Gazetteer  of  May  13, 
1 773,  "  scarlet,  buff,  blue,  green,  crimson,  white, 
skye  blue,  and  other  colored  superfine  cloths ;" 
when  John  Hancock,  of  penmanship  fame,  is 
described  in  his  home  in  Boston  with  a  red  velvet 
skull-cap  lined  with  linen  which  was  turned  over 
6 


Preface 

the  edge  of  the  velvet  about  three  inches  deep, 
a  blue  damask  dressing-gown  lined  with  silk,  a 
white  stock,  with  satin  embroidered  waistcoat, 
black  satin  breeches,  white  silk  stockings  to  his 
knees,  and  red  morocco  slippers. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  minuet  and  other 
stately  dances  of  colonial  times  were  the  natural 
result  of  the  wonderful  clothes  the  upper  classes 
of  the  people  wore.  It  would  have  been  ex 
tremely  difficult  for  a  lady  to  waltz  with  her  hair 
done  up  in  a  great  pyramid  of  paste,  with  perhaps 
a  turban  or  a  large  feather  on  it.  She  scarcely 
dared  move  her  head,  except  very  slowly. 

The  man  with  his  variety  of  wigs — tie-wig, 
bob-wig,  bag-wig,  nightcap-wig,  and  riding-wig 
— usually  selected  one  for  a  ball  on  which  he 
dared  not  put  his  hat,  which,  with  its  gold-lace 
trimming,  was  carried  under  his  arm  ;  and  the 
sword,  which  was  the  essential  of  full  dress, 
would  have  been  very  much  in  the  way  in  a 
modern  waltz  in  a  crowded  ball-room. 

But  all  that  we  have  and  all  that  we  are  those 
colonists  gave  us,  and  this  we  are  now  beginning 
to  realize.  We  are  re-discovering  the  debt  we 
owe  to  the  colonies.  We  are  turning  to  investi 
gate  every  detail  of  colonial  life  with  a  loving 
devotion  which  it  is  hoped  may  be  a  sign  of 
stronger  national  feeling,  or  at  least  of  an  at 
tempt  to  have  a  true  national  feeling,  and  to 
7 


Preface 

give  up  the  so-called  cosmopolitanism  and  vulgar 
worship  of  everything  foreign  which  so  long  has 
been  our  bane. 

Fifty  years  ago,  or  even  twenty  years  ago, 
there  was  little  or  no  interest  in  colonial  his 
tory.  It  was  regarded  as  a  time  of  slavery.  It 
seemed  as  if  we  had  then  been  a  different  peo 
ple,  unworthy  of  our  present  selves,  and  the 
bitter  feelings  of  the  Revolution  were  continued 
by  the  remembrance  of  the  war  of  1812. 
Whatever  was  written  about  the  colonial  period 
was  so  dull  or  so  full  of  vague  generalities  that 
no  one  cared  to  read  it. 

It  was  taken  for  granted  that  everything  had 
begun  suddenly  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution, 
and  behind  that  there  was  nothing  of  impor 
tance.  The  slow  growth  of  almost  two  hundred 
years  which  had  led  up  to  that  event  was  ig 
nored.  Many  writers  assumed  that  our  national 
Constitution  was  made  off-hand  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment,  or  that  we  copied  it  from  European 
models. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  proofs  of  the 
vital  interest  which  the  colonial  times  possess 
for  us  is  the  beautiful  revival  in  our  domestic 
architecture  which  has  followed  from  the  return 
to  the  types  of  those  days  which  we  once  sup 
posed  were  only  days  of  slavery.  The  Revo 
lution  killed  architecture.  Any  one  familiar 
8 


Preface 

with  old  buildings  knows  the  steady  deteriora 
tion  from  the  year  1780,  until  by  the  time  of 
the  civil  war  we  were  in  a  reign  of  horrors,  with 
the  scroll-saw  of  the  carpenter  triumphant. 

The  Philadelphia  Centennial  Exhibition  of 
1876  aroused  an  unfortunate  interest  in  Euro 
pean  forms  of  building.  Our  people,  having 
suddenly  awakened  to  the  thought  that  they 
had  no  architecture  beyond  the  proportions  of  a 
dry-goods  box,  ran  riot,  and,  under  the  name 
of  Romanesque,  disfigured  the  country  with  all 
manner  of  grotesqueness  and  individual  conceit, 
in  which  Gothic,  Classic,  Queen  Anne,  and 
every  other  style  were  mingled.  Then  it  was 
discovered  that  in  our  own  land  and  in  the  line  of 
our  own  development  we  had  a  pure  and  perfect 
type  for  inspiration  and  suggestion,  a  type  which 
belonged  to  the  nation  and  had  been  wrought 
out  by  more  than  a  hundred  years  of  natural 
effort  and  experience  without  hysterical  imita 
tion  of  alien  sources.  It  has  accomplished  great 
things  for  us  already,  and  there  is  more  in  store. 

The  present  volumes  complete  a  purpose  I 
have  long  had  in  mind,  to  present  the  various 
aspefts  and  influences  of  colonial  life  in  a  way 
that  would  interest  ordinary  readers.  A  large 
part  of  these  volumes  was  written  some  time 
ago  ;  but  their  progress  was  delayed  when  I 
found  in  the  course  of  my  investigations  that 
9 


Preface 

Pennsylvania  alone  had  a  most  curious  and 
complicated  history,  almost  totally  negleded  and 
unwritten,  which  deserved  separate  treatment. 

"  The  Making  of  Pennsylvania,"  which  de 
scribes  the  elements  of  the  very  miscellaneous 
population  of  that  province,  was  accordingly 
published  first,  and  was  followed  by  "  Pennsyl 
vania  :  Colony  and  Commonwealth,"  as  a  sup 
plement,  giving  the  narrative  history.  I  have 
also  written  "  The  Evolution  of  the  Constitu 
tion,"  which  shows  how  the  plan  and  principles 
of  our  national  government  were  developed  by  a 
natural  process  of  growth  on  our  own  soil  during 
the  two  hundred  years  of  the  colonial  period, 
instead  of  being  imitated  from  European  insti 
tutions,  as  the  cosmopolites  have  vainly  imagined. 
These  volumes,  with  the  present  ones,  disclose 
the  important  influences,  social,  moral,  racial, 
political,  and  constitutional,  which  created  the 
American  Republic. 

I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Henry  T.  Coates,  of 
Philadelphia,  for  the  pifture  of  Shirley,  and  for 
the  use  of  photographs  from  which  the  head-  and 
tail-pieces  of  the  first  chapter  were  drawn.  The 
Doughoregan  manor-house  and  the  decorations 
for  the  chapter  on  New  Jersey  have  been  newly 
drawn  from  illustrations  in  The  Magazine  of 
America?i  History,  by  permission  of  Messrs.  A. 
S.  Barnes  and  Company,  of  New  York. 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS 
VOL.   I 

¥ 

CHAPTER    I 
CAVALIERS  AND  TOBACCO 9 

CHAPTER     II 

FROM  PURITANS  AND  WITCHES  TO  LITERATURE  AND 

PHILOSOPHY 117 

CHAPTER    III 
THE  LAND  OF  STEADY   HABITS 243 

CHAPTER     IV 
THE  ISLE  OF  ERRORS ....     303 

CHAPTER     V 
THE  WHITE  MOUNTAINS  AND  THE  GREEN  ....     324 

CH A  PTER    VI 
QUAKER   PROSPERITY 340 

CHAPTER    VII 
NOVA  CJESAREA 377 

II 


LIST   OF   PHOTOGRAVURES 

VOL.    I 


SHIRLEY  ................  Frontispiece 

James  River,  Virginia.      Built  1760. 

KING  HOOPER  HOUSE     ............     190 

Danvers,  Massachusetts.      Built  1754. 

MOUNT  PLEASANT  ..............     366 

Philadelphia.      Built  1762. 

PYNE  HOUSE   ..............    .    .     380 

Princeton,  New  Jersey. 


CHAPTER    I 

CAVALIERS  AND  TOBACCO 

pHE  Commonwealth  which  could  produce 
Washington,  Jefferson,  Henry,  Madison, 
Marshall,  Monroe,  the  Lees,  the  Randolphs,  the 
Carters,  the  Harrisons,  and  a  host  of  other  emi 
nent  men,  which  was  called  the  Mother  of  Presi 
dents,  and  which  exercised  such  a  controlling  in 
fluence  in  the  Revolution  and  the  formation  of  the 
Constitution,  must  have  been  a  remarkable  com 
munity  ;  for  such  distinguished  men  are  the  result 
of  the  conditions  in  which  they  live,  and  cannot 
spring  up  by  accident  or  of  their  own  will. 

We  are  still  dominated  by  the  ideas  of  these 
Virginians  ;  we  follow  their  thoughts,  obey  the 
fundamental  laws  and  principles  they  framed, 
without  even  a  desire  to  change  them.  What 
was  the  secret  of  their  life  and  their  success  ? 

When  we  wander  through  the  land  they  lived 
'5 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

in  we  find  the  remains  of  handsome  old  brick 
churches  which  were  evidently  intended  for  a 
larger  population  than  now  lives  upon  the  soil, 
and  large  mansion-houses  with  ornamentation  and 
gardens  implying  a  luxury  and  exuberance  of 
life  which  their  successors  do  not  enjoy.  From 
these  houses  we  gather  the  remains  of  silverware 
and  furniture  which  give  us  glimpses  not  only 
of  their  wealth,  but  of  their  taste  and  accom 
plishment  in  the  arts  of  life,  which  we  are  glad 
to  imitate. 

Fascinated  with  further  research,  we  pore  over 
records  and  manuscripts  and  histories  only  to  find 
that  they  were  a  gay,  happy  people ;  a  race  of 
sportsmen,  cock-fighters  and  fox-hunters  ;  bright, 
humorous,  and  sociable  ;  in  the  saddle  by  day 
and  feasting  and  dancing  by  night ;  and  we  go 
away  with  the  impression  that  the  hounds  were 
always  baying  in  Virginia,  that  the  sun  shone  all 
day  long,  and  all  night  the  fiddles  scraped  and  the 
darkies  sang. 

But  these  men  were  among  the  strongest  in- 
telledls  of  their  century.  With  no  pretensions 
or  show  of  book-learning,  they  seem  to  have  pos 
sessed  themselves  of  all  the  essential  informa 
tion  of  their  time.  They  had  a  soundness  of 
judgment,  a  breadth  of  grasp,  a  lofty  ambition, 
and  a  high-strung  sense  of  honor  which  made 
them  master-minds. 

16 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

When  in  September,  1774,  Washington, 
Henry,  Randolph,  Harrison,  Bland,  and  Pendle- 
ton  rode  up,  sunburnt,  on  their  thoroughbreds 
to  attend  the  first  meeting  of  the  Continental 
Congress  at  Philadelphia,  they  carried  every 
thing  before  them.  "  Fine  fellows,"  "  very 
high,"  "  not  a  milksop  among  them,"  are  the 
descriptions  we  read  in  the  diaries  or  letters  of 
people  who  were  in  the  town  at  that  time ; 
and  other  delegates  who  succeeded  them,  such 
as  the  Lees  and  Carter  Braxton,  were  equally 
efficient. 

Some  subtle  combination  of  climate,  life,  and 
thought  produced  this  result,  which,  like  all  such 
things,  becomes  difficult  in  the  last  analysis ; 
and  unfortunately  the  Virginians,  while  they 
were  great  makers  of  history,  were  not  writers 
of  it.  Scraps,  relics,  and  ruins  are  all  that  re 
main  of  their  curious  and  interesting  civilization, 
and  for  many  phases  of  their  life  we  have  only 
the  one-sided  comments  and  criticisms  on  its 
excesses. 

The  beginnings  of  Virginia  by  a  handful  of 
reckless,  improvident  men,  who  in  1607  settled 
on  a  little,  swampy,  malarious  peninsula  on  the 
James  River,  were  as  humble,  weak,  and  un 
promising  as  anything  of  the  kind  could  be.  But 
they  were  starting  the  great  British  colonial  em 
pire,  the  vastness  of  which,  stretching  round  the 
VOL.  I.-2  \ 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

world  through  Africa,  Asia,  America,  and  Aus 
tralia,  is  to-day  the  wonder  among  nations,  and 
but  for  a  mistake  in  policy  might  be  larger  by 
seventy  millions  of  people  and  the  whole  terri 
tory  of  the  United  States. 

Up  to  that  time  England  had  done  nothing  in 
colonizing,  although  more  than  a  hundred  years 
had  passed  since  Columbus  had  discovered  South 
America,  and  meanwhile  Spain  had  built  up  for 
herself  a  strong  colonial  power.  In  all  that  time 
England  had  been  entitled  to  North  America  by 
the  discovery  of  the  Cabots  in  1497;  but  the 
nation  which  in  the  end  was  to  be  the  greatest 
colonizer  was  unable  to  move,  and  her  first 
attempt  must  have  seemed  very  ludicrous  to 
those  who  knew  what  Spain  had  accomplished. 

The  company  of  one  hundred  and  five  persons 
that  began  the  colony  at  Jamestown  in  1607  was 
not  of  the  kind  to  conquer  the  wilderness  or 
found  a  commonwealth,  and  no  one  would  have 
ever  suspected  them  of  being  the  forerunners  of 
a  stupendous  colonial  power.  More  than  half 
of  them  were  poor  gentlemen  who  were  unaccus 
tomed  to  manual  labor  and  despised  it ;  many 
were  small  tradesmen  or  servants  ;  some  are  de 
scribed  as  "  Jewellers,  gold  refiners,  and  a  per 
fumer  ;"  and  they  were  nearly  all  odd  sticks  who 
had  not  been  very  successful  at  anything  in 
England. 

18 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

There  was  only  one  real  man  among  them,  a 
short,  stout,  vigorous  little  fellow  with  red  hair 
and  beard  and  a  face  flaming  with  energy,  Captain 
John  Smith  by  name.  He  was  about  twenty- 
seven  years  old,  and,  if  his  own  account  can  be 
believed,  had  recently  returned  from  most  extra 
ordinary  adventures  among  the  Turks,  where  he 
had  slain  champions  in  single  combat  and  broken 
the  hearts  of  the  most  illustrious  Turkish 'ladies. 

Idle  and  shiftless,  Smith's  companions  often 
had  to  be  driven  by  force  to  work,  and  some 
times  would  not  work  even  to  save  their  lives, 
and  they  dissipated  their  energy  in  continual  dis 
putes  and  quarrels.  On  the  voyage  over  they 
had  suspeded  the  redoubtable  little  captain  of 
aspiring  to  be  "  King  of  Virginia."  They  put 
him  under  arrest,  and,  as  he  says,  had  a  gallows 
ready  to  execute  him. 

They  intended  to  go  to  Roanoke  Island,  a 
desolate  sand-bank  on  the  coast  of  North  Caro 
lina,  where  some  years  before  a  colony  sent  out 
by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  had  perished.  But  a 
storm  drove  them  northward  into  Chesapeake 
Bay,  and  they  turned  into  Hampton  Roads, 
where  vessels  have  ever  since  sought  refuge. 
They  called  the  cape  at  the  mouth  of  the  river 
Point  Comfort,  in  memory  of  the  relief  they  felt 
when  they  reached  it,  and  it  still  bears  the  name. 

Sailing  about  fifty  miles  up  the  river,  which 
19 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

they  called  the  James  in  honor  of  the  king,  they 
selected  a  low,  swampy  peninsula  on  the  north 
bank  of  it  for  their  settlement,  which  they  called 
Jamestown.  It  was  a  most  unhealthy  spot,  and 
between  their  arrival  in  May,  1607,  and  the 
following  Odlober  half  of  them  died  of  malarial 
fevers.  But  being  a  peninsula  surrounded  on 
three  sides  by  the  river,  it  was  easy  to  fortify 
and  defend,  and  they  depended  on  the  wild 
fowl  and  fish  of  the  river  for  their  food.  If 
they  had  chosen  a  more  wholesome  spot  in  the 
interior  among  the  pines,  they  might  have  starved 
to  death  or  have  been  all  killed  by  the  Indians, 
and  left  no  trace  of  their  fate. 

The  James  River  is  surpassingly  lovely  in  the 
month  of  May,  and  the  soft  climate,  the  flowers, 
the  whispering  pines,  and  the  myriads  of  birds 
convinced  them  that  they  had  surely  reached 
the  land  of  the  idle  man's  delight.  They  were 
a  strange  contrast  to  the  stern  Puritans  who 
afterwards  founded  Massachusetts.  They  were 
royalist  in  politics  and  Episcopal  in  religion. 
They  were  not  flying  from  persecution.  They 
had  no  grievance.  They  had  nothing  against 
either  the  English  government  or  the  English 
Church,  and  they  brought  both  with  them.  So 
slight  was  their  zeal  that  their  object  in  coming 
to  America  has  been  disputed.  Their  motives 
were  probably  restlessness,  the  hope  of  finding 
20 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

gold,  and  a  conviftion  that  they  could  not  be 
much  worse  off  in  America  than  they  were  in 
England. 

Their  governing  body  consisted  of  a  presi 
dent  and  council.  Wingfield,  their  first  presi 
dent,  was  utterly  incapable,  and  so  was  his  suc 
cessor,  Ratcliffe,  who  was  finally  sent  back  to 
England  for  fear,  as  Smith  said,  that  the  colonists 
would  kill  him.  When  the  hot  months  of  sum 
mer  came  all  were  stricken  with  fever  and  lay 
groaning  in  their  huts  with  scarcely  enough 
energy  left  to  bury  the  dead.  Some  were  de 
termined  to  return  to  England,  and  Wingfield, 
the  president,  was  concerned  in  two  attempts  to 
seize  the  pinnace  for  this  purpose.  In  the  sec 
ond  attempt,  Kendall,  one  of  the  ringleaders, 
was  tried,  convi£ted,  and  shot.  Another  at 
tempt  made  by  Ratcliffe  was  frustrated  by 
Smith. 

For  some  time  after  landing  Smith  was  still 
under  arrest  for  his  supposed  design  to  be  king. 
But  he  now  demanded  a  trial,  and  on  his  ac 
quittal,  being  the  only  man  possessed  of  brains 
or  vigor,  he  became  the  leader  of  the  colonists 
and  saved  them  from  destruction.  He  fought 
off  the  Indians,  obtained  supplies  of  corn  and 
venison  from  them,  and  during  a  few  weeks' 
captivity  was  saved,  as  he  relates,  by  Pocahontas. 
When  the  cool  weather  of  autumn  drove  away 

21 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

the  fever  he  had  only  about  forty  men  left. 
With  this  handful  he  not  only  maintained  the 
existence  of  Jamestown,  but  made  explorations 
in  the  surrounding  country. 

It  is  extremely  doubtful,  however,  if  he  could 
have  carried  his  forty  colonists  through  another 
summer  of  fever  in  the  swamps  of  Jamestown. 
But  in  spring  more  ships  and  people  arrived, 
and  during  the  summer  Smith  made  his  famous 
exploration  of  Chesapeake  Bay. 

He  hoped,  no  doubt,  to  find  the  long-sought 
passage  through  the  land  to  the  South  Sea,  which 
was  supposed  to  lead  to  the  kingdom  of  the 
Grand  Khan  and  other  places  of  fabulous 
wealth.  The  colonists  had  been  specially  in 
structed  to  search  carefully  for  this  passage. 
Smith  was  disappointed  in  this  search,  but  he 
made  a  most  thorough  examination  of  the 
Chesapeake  in  its  entire  length,  and  drew  a 
map  of  it  which  remained  the  authority  for  the 
geography  of  that  part  of  the  continent  for 
more  than  a  hundred  years.  When  Lord  Balti 
more  obtained  his  charter  for  Maryland,  in 
1632,  and  when  William  Penn  obtained  his 
charter  for  Pennsylvania,  in  1681,  they  both 
relied  on  this  map  for  the  boundaries  of  their 
provinces. 

Smith's  account  of  his  exploration  can  still 
be  read  with  interest  and  the  places  he  de- 
22 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

scribes  recognized.  He  speaks  of  the  red- 
winged  blackbirds,  which  he  calls  blackbirds 
with  a  red  shoulder.  With  his  boat  and  men 
clad  in  armor  he  entered  the  mouth  of  the 
Susquehanna,  and  ended  his  exploration  at  the 
point  where  the  bridge  of  the  railroad  between 
Philadelphia  and  Baltimore  now  spans  the 
stream.  He  speaks  of  the  high  bluffs  farther 
up  the  river  which  we  now  see  from  the  bridge  ; 
and  it  was  here  that  he  met  the  tribe  of  Indians 
called  the  Susquehannocks,  remarkable,  he  says, 
for  their  lofty  stature. 

Smith  continued  to  be  the  ruler  of  the  colony 
for  two  years,  maintaining  command  among  his 
turbulent  people  by  courage  and  address  and  his 
known  willingness  to  strike  and  kill  when  occa 
sion  required.  Arrivals  from  England  increased 
his  people  to  about  five  hundred,  composed  for 
the  most  part  of  rakes,  broken  tradesmen,  and 
impoverished  gentlemen.  The  bankrupt  ele 
ment  began  now  to  appear,  as  afterwards  in 
Carolina,  but  it  never  became  so  numerous. 

The  beginnings  of  Virginia  were,  however, 
more  disorderly  and  hopeless  than  those  of 
South  Carolina,  and  for  many  years  the  people 
had  to  be  held  down  with  a  strong  hand. 
There  were  continual  fighting  and  treaty  making 
and  treaty  breaking  with  the  Indians  ;  and  the 
colonists  were  kept  together  by  the  Indian  hos- 
23 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

tility  like  the  early  South  Carolinians,  and  hardly 
dared  at  first  to  cultivate  the  land. 

Their  property  was  all  held  in  common  for 
the  general  good,  and  there  were  scarcely  any 
women  among  them.  They  built  fifty  or  sixty 
wooden  houses  and  a  church  on  the  swampy 
peninsula  where  they  had  established  James 
town,  and  in  the  narrow  neck  which  connected 
it  with  the  mainland  they  had  a  fort.  They 
lived  on  the  game  and  fish  they  killed  or  pro 
cured  from  the  Indians,  with  a  few  little  patches 
of  corn  which  they  cultivated. 

Smith  attempted  to  establish  branch  settle 
ments  farther  up  the  river,  but  the  Indians  were 
so  hostile  that  fora  long  time  very  little  could  be 
done.  The  peninsula  with  water  on  three  sides 
and  a  fort  at  the  neck  was  the  safest  place,  and 
there  they  huddled  together  for  several  years, 
the  only  white  men  on  all  the  vast  continent  of 
forests  and  mountains  which  in  time  their  race 
was  to  people  from  sea  to  sea. 

Smith,  to  whom  belongs  the  honor  of  keeping 
alive  this  first  company  of  Englishmen  that  had 
ever  lived  in  North  America,  was  a  curious  charac 
ter.  By  some  writers  he  has  been  described  as  a 
"  wonder  of  nature"  and  "  a  mirror  of  our  time," 
and  his  own  description  of  himself  is  never  un 
complimentary.  By  others  he  is  called  a  lying 
braggart,  an  adventurer,  a  Gascon,  and  a  beggar. 
24 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

In  this  country  his  own  estimate  was  usually 
accepted  and  even  enlarged  upon  until  Mr. 
Charles  Dudley  Warner's  careful  biography  of 
him  sifted  the  evidence.  That  he  had  a  most 
valuable  faculty  of  commanding  rough  men,  lead 
ing  exploring  expeditions,  and  preparing  maps 
of  wild  countries  which  were  as  accurate  as  any 
of  that  time  is  unquestioned;  and  he  seems  to 
have  been  free  from  the  vagabond  vices  of  drink 
ing  and  gambling  which  were  so  rife  among  his 
followers.  But  his  own  estimate  of  himself 
and  the  descriptions  of  his  wonderful  adventures 
can  hardly  be  accepted  without  a  great  deal  of 
allowance. 

He  was  a  boaster  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
word,  and  every  page  of  his  books  and  pam 
phlets  is  full  of  it.  Everything  he  wrote, 
especially  his  adventures  in  Turkey,  is  in  the 
inflated  romantic  style  of  lords,  ladies,  Tartars, 
Turks,  swords,  blood,  and  death.  We  can 
scarcely  think  of  him  without  seeing  the  pistols 
in  his  belt  and  his  sword  slashing  infidel  heads. 
If  he  had  not  been  such  a  thorough  believer  in 
civilization  and  progress  he  would  have  made  an 
admirable  pirate. 

He  rouses  suggestions  of  the  gorgeousness  of 

the  East,  the  rich  garments,  the  camels,  and  the 

blazing  sun.      He  tries  to  give  outlandish  names 

to  places.       Cape  Ann  he  wanted  to  call   Cape 

25 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

Tragabigzanda,  which  was  the  name  of  a  Turk 
ish  lady  whose  smiles  he  declared  he  had  won 
and  who  had  befriended  him  when  he  was  a 
slave.  She  would,  he  assures  us,  feign  herself 
sick  and  stay  home  from  the  bath  and  avoid  all 
amusements  in  order  to  hear  him  relate  the  his 
tory  of  his  achievements. 

Through  all  he  says  there  runs  a  conscious 
effort  to  defend  his  reputation  and  a  craving  for 
notice  and  sympathy  :  his  merits  have  been  over 
looked  ;  his  sacrifices  have  been  in  vain  ;  people, 
he  thinks,  do  not  sufficiently  appreciate  his  glo 
rious  life  of  adventure. 

It  is  now  generally  held  by  the  best  authorities 
that  the  story  of  his  deliverance  from  death  by 
Pocahontas  was  one  of  the  efforts  of  his  chivalric 
imagination.  There  undoubtedly  was  a  playful 
little  Indian  maiden  named  Pocahontas,  who,  at 
the  time  of  Smith's  stay  in  Virginia,  used  to 
come  to  the  fort  at  Jamestown  and  turn  somer 
sets  with  the  white  boys,  and  at  times  her 
friendship  was  of  assistance  to  the  colonists ; 
for  she  appears  to  have  liked  the  English  better 
than  her  own  people. 

She  finally  married  an  Englishman  and  was 
exhibited  in  London  society  as  a  curiosity,  very 
much  as  we  have  known  in  our  own  time  African 
chieftains  or  other  oddities  exhibited  there.  In 
his  early  writings  about  the  colony,  Smith  never 
26 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

mentions  his  obligation  to  her  ;  but  when  she 
had  become  famous  by  her  marriage  and  exhi 
bition  in  England,  he  laid  claim  to  the  interesting 
episode.  He  always  professed  to  have  found 
favor  with  the  fair  and  to  have  been  assisted  by 
them,  and  the  romantic  career  of  Pocahontas 
was  a  great  opportunity  and  temptation. 

It  seems  probable  that  his  ideals  of  life  were 
founded  on  the  extravagant  stories  of  chivalry 
and  knight-errantry  which  Don  Quixote  (which 
appeared  about  the  time  Smith  came  to  Virginia) 
was  written  to  satirize.  His  style  of  writing  is 
ludicrously  like  the  style  of  those  romances,  and, 
as  Mr.  Warner  has  pointed  out,  some  of  his 
adventures  are  most  suspiciously  like  certain 
stock  tales  of  the  time. 

But  Smith  was  not  a  Don  Quixote  in  Vir 
ginia  ;  for  when  it  came  to  practical  affairs  his 
common  sense  was  always  in  the  ascendant,  and 
romance  was  forgotten  until  he  sat  down  to 
write  again.  He  had  no  faith  in  the  gold  mines 
so  many  expected  to  find,  and  when  Captain 
Newport  loaded  a  ship  with  a  quantity  of  yellow 
earth  he  had  found,  Smith  bluntly  informed  the 
people  that  he  was  "  not  enamored  of  their 
dirty  skill  to  fraught  such  a  drunken  ship  with 
so  much  gilded  dirt ;"  and  he  always  declared 
that  wealth  could  be  obtained  from  America 
only  by  labor. 

27 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

But  the  council  of  the  colony  in  England 
failed  to  appreciate  him.  He  found  no  gold, 
he  was  harsh,  they  said,  to  the  Indians,  he  failed 
to  find  the  passage  to  the  South  Sea,  he  sent 
back  no  ships  freighted  with  produfts,  he  was 
rude  and  rough,  and  they  were  not  growing 
rich  by  his  administration.  He  was  deposed 
and  returned  to  England  just  after  he  had  almost 
been  assassinated  when  lying  wounded  and  help 
less  from  an  accidental  explosion  of  some  gun 
powder. 

In  1614  he  made  a  voyage  to  the  northern 
coast  of  America,  explored  New  England,  giving 
it  its  name,  and  made  one  of  his  excellent  maps, 
which  was  the  guide  of  navigators  and  geographers 
until  far  within  the  next  century.  He  died  in 
London  in  163 1,  after  writing  full  descriptions  of 
his  explorations  and  adventures. 

That  he  had  been  a  useful  leader  in  Virginia 
seems  to  be  proved  by  the  depletion  which  be 
gan  there  as  soon  as  he  had  gone.  Crops,  work, 
and  fortifications  were  neglefted  and  disease  and 
famine  set  in.  These  first  Americans  seem  to 
have  been  utterly  incapable  of  self-government, 
and  some  of  them  left  the  colony  to  become 
pirates  in  the  West  Indies.  Six  months  after 
Smith's  departure  only  sixty  of  the  five  hundred 
inhabitants  were  alive.  After  three  years  of 
effort,  all  that  could  be  said  of  the  Virginia  colony 
28 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

was  that  it  consisted  of  about  sixty  persons  and 
five  hundred  graves. 

The  miserable  remnant  are  said  to  have  finally 
resorted  to  cannibalism  to  maintain  themselves  ; 
but  as  this  charge  rests  on  an  assertion  after 
wards  made  by  Smith,  and  seems  to  be  denied  by 
other  sources  of  information,  its  truth  is  doubtful. 
It  is  certain,  however,  that  they  were  reduced  to 
great  straits ;  and  when  two  ships  arrived  with 
food  for  only  fourteen  days,  the  wretched  colo 
nists  refused  to  remain  any  longer  in  the  country. 
They  were  taken  aboard  the  vessels,  which  set 
sail  for  England,  and  Jamestown  was  abandoned. 
But  they  had  scarcely  reached  the  ocean  when 
they  were  met  by  a  new  governor,  with  ships, 
food,  and  men,  and  Virginia  was  restored  to 
life. 

Lord  Delaware,  the  new  governor,  remained 
with  the  new  colony  only  from  June,  1610,  until 
the  following  March,  when  a  severe  attack  of 
ague  sent  him  to  England  never  to  return.  He 
was  a  courtly  nobleman,  and  even  there  in  the 
wilderness  afTedled  the  state  of  a  little  monarch 
with  his  privy  council,  his  lieutenant-general,  and 
his  admiral.  He  maintained  his  authority  well, 
and  during  his  short  reign  there  was  peace  as 
well  as  plenty  in  Virginia. 

His  successor,  Sir  Thomas  Dale,  was  a  rough 
soldier,  who  professed  to  be  very  religious  and 
29 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

to  possess  a  great  knowledge  of  divinity.  He 
punished  a  conspiracy  against  himself  by  keeping 
one  man  chained  to  a  tree  with  a  bodkin  thrust 
through  his  tongue  until  he  died,  and  the  others 
he  disposed  of  by  hanging,  shooting,  and  break 
ing  on  the  wheel.  He  asked  Powhatan,  the 
Indian  chief,  to  give  him  his  daughter  in  mar 
riage  ;  but  the  monarch  of  the  woods  declined. 

Dale's  successor  was  Yeardley,  a  mild  man, 
who  was  governor  of  Virginia  several  times. 
Of  the  other  governors,  Argall  was  a  buccaneer 
who  robbed  and  abused  the  colony,  and  when 
deposed,  loaded  a  vessel  with  his  plunder  and 
sailed  away.  Sir  John  Harvey  appropriated  the 
fines  and  revenues  to  his  own  use  and  granted 
away  the  land  of  individuals  until  the  council 
thrust  him  out.  Such  was  Virginia's  fortune, 
sometimes  ruled  by  a  mild  and  reasonable  man, 
sometimes  by  a  tyrant  or  a  robber,  until  the 
year  1642,  when  Sir  William  Berkeley  appeared 
and  was  twice  governor  for  many  years. 

Virginia  lacked  at  first  the  two  essentials  of  a 
colony  :  there  were  no  women  and  there  was  no 
private  ownership  of  land.  The  early  settlers 
came  without  wives,  and  their  form  of  govern 
ment  was  communism.  Everything  they  raised 
from  the  soil  or  obtained  from  the  Indians  or 
took  in  hunting  went  into  the  common  store  and 
was  equally  divided.  The  colony  seemed  to  be 
30 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

constituted  expressly  for  failure,  for  the  climate 
made  men  lazy  and  there  was  no  incentive  to 
work.  A  man  could  not  gain  a  future  home 
for  himself  by  clearing  and  cultivating  land  ;  he 
had  no  family  to  inspire  his  exertions;  he  lived 
only  for  himself  and  for  the  present,  and  there 
fore  he  lived  from  hand  to  mouth  and  from  day 
to  day.  The  colony  was  nothing  but  a  military 
camp,  and  could  be  maintained  only  by  pouring 
fresh  men  into  it  from  England,  at  great  cost 
and  with  terrible  loss  of  life. 

But  in  Dale's  administration  communism  was 
abolished  and  the  land  given  to  individuals  ;  and 
in  1619  Sir  Edwin  Sandys,  seeing  the  absolute 
necessity  of  women,  shipped  ninety  maidens  to 
Virginia,  who  were  free  to  marry  whomsoever 
they  chose  ;  but  the  husband  each  one  selected 
must  pay  for  her  outfit  and  voyage  to  the  province. 
Arrangements  were  made  for  the  support  of  those 
who  should  not  happen  to  selecl:  or  be  selected. 
But  no  difficulty  was  experienced  on  that  point. 
Within  a  short  time  after  their  arrival  they  were 
all  married  and  paid  for.  So  well  pleased  were 
they  with  the  result  that  they  wrote  letters  to 
England  which  induced  a  shipment  of  sixty 
more. 

After  the  colonist  got  his  wife  and  his  land 
there  was  no  longer  any  doubt  about  the  success 
of  Virginia.  Immigration  rapidly  increased  and 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

the  colony  grew  by  its  own  vigor.  In  1622 
there  were  over  four  thousand  inhabitants,  in 
1650  about  fifteen  thousand,  and  in  1670  about 
forty  thousand. 

These  later  immigrants  were  mostly  of  the 
royalist  party  in  England,  cavaliers  as  they  were 
called,  a  fine  body  of  men,  far  superior  to  the 
disorderly  crew  whom  Smith  kept  from  famine. 
They  completely  changed  the  character  of  the 
colony  and  blotted  out  the  disorderly,  indolent 
past.  They  spread  along  both  sides  of  the 
James,  a  broad,  beautiful  river,  navigable  for 
almost  a  hundred  miles  from  its  mouth.  Then 
they  occupied  the  York,  which  is  the  next  river 
to  the  north,  and  afterwards  the  Rappahan- 
nock  and  the  Potomac.  At  the  time  of  the 
Revolution  they  had  planted  themselves  on  all 
these  streams  from  their  outlets  in  Chesapeake 
Bay  to  their  sources  in  the  Blue  Ridge,  where 
the  hunter  and  the  Indian  fighter  guarded  the 
advance  of  civilization. 

But  their  success  was  entirely  due  to  one 
produft,  tobacco,  which  with  the  assistance  of 
negro  slavery  built  up  a  most  curious  and  inter 
esting  civilization,  as  rice  afterwards  did  in  Caro 
lina.  The  cultivation  of  tobacco  began  early, 
the  demand  for  it  rapidly  increased,  and  great 
profits  were  made.  The  crop  was  one  which 
required  close  attention  and  labor  for  only  a 
32 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

short  period  of  the  year,  and  Virginia  held  the 
monopoly  of  its  production.  It  was  a  business 
which  made  a  man  rich  and  at  the  same  time 
gave  him  a  great  deal  of  leisure.  It  created  a 
tobacco  aristocracy,  and  aristocracy,  as  time 
proved,  was  better  suited  to  Virginia  than  de 
mocracy.  Tobacco  pervaded  everything.  It 
was  for  a  long  time  the  money  of  the  colony. 
Salaries  and  wages  were  paid  in  it,  taxes  were 
levied  in  it,  and  criminals  were  fined  so  many 
pounds  of  tobacco. 

The  Virginians  were  never  seafaring,  like  the 
South  Carolinians  or  the  people  of  the  Northern 
colonies.  They  neither  built  nor  owned  any 
ships  except  a  few  small  coasting  vessels,  and 
they  never  engaged  in  manufacturing.  They 
imported  everything  they  used — implements, 
clothes,  tables,  chairs,  and  even  brooms — and 
exported  nothing  but  tobacco  and  a  little  wheat. 
They  even  had  not  mills  to  grind  their  own 
grain. 

They  were  less  varied  in  their  occupations 
than  even  the  South  Carolinians,  and  they  had 
no  towns.  The  South  Carolinians,  as  we  shall 
see,  were  driven  by  circumstances  to  concen 
trate  their  life  in  Charleston,  and  were  stimu 
lated  by  the  close  association  ;  but  the  Vir 
ginians  seem  to  have  been  stimulated  by  a  life  of 
individual  isolation  which  in  the  end  produced 

VOL.  I.— 3  33 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

better  results  than  the  close  contadl  of  the  Caro 
linians. 

But  during  the  first  seventy  years  of  Vir 
ginia's  existence,  or  from  1607  to  Bacon's  Re 
bellion  in  1676,  her  progress  was  comparatively 
slow,  and  at  the  end  of  that  time  her  population 
was  only  about  thirty-eight  thousand  whites 
and  two  thousand  slaves.  The  cause  of  this 
slowness  seems  to  have  been  the  continued 
Indian  hostility,  which  repressed  the  people 
as  it  repressed  the  South  Carolinians  and  pre 
vented  their  spreading  out ;  and  there  was  one 
frightful  massacre  in  1622,  the  memory  of  which 
intimidated  the  people  for  many  a  year. 

In  that  time  the  planters  lived  in  small  wooden 
houses  carefully  palisaded,  and  though  they  are 
described  by  travellers  as  contented  and  having 
abundance  of  game  and  produces  from  their 
land,  their  life,  like  that  of  the  early  Carolinians, 
was  one  of  continual  guard  duty.  The  large 
mansion  houses  of  which  we  now  see  the  re 
mains  were  not  built  in  those  days.  The  great 
period  of  Virginia,  as  of  Massachusetts,  did  not 
begin  until  after  1700. 

They  had,  however,  many  advantages  over 
the  Carolinians.  The  climate  was  cooler  and 
more  healthy,  the  white  man  coujd  hunt  and 
work  in  both  summer  and  winter,  and  although 
he  had  the  fear  of  the  Indian  constantly  before 
34 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

his  eyes,  he  had  comparatively  little  fear  of  an 
insurrection  among  his  slaves. 

In  "  A  Perfect  Pifture  of  Virginia,"  published 
in  London  in  1669,  we  meet  with  some  of  that 
enthusiasm  of  description  which  was  so  often 
applied  to  the  Southern  colonies.  Virginia  is 
an  earthly  paradise,  the  writer  says,  fertile  and 
rich,  full  of  trees  and  bees,  rare  colored  par- 
roketoes,  "  and  one  bird  we  call  the  mock-bird, 
for  he  will  imitate  all  other  birds'  notes,  even 
the  owls'  and  nightingales' ;"  a  great  contrast  to 
New  England,  where,  "  Except  a  herring  be 
put  into  the  hole  you  set  the  corn  or  maize  in, 
it  will  not  come  up." 

After  the  year  1700,  the  Indians  being  sub 
dued,  the  Virginians  were  able  to  spread  out 
and  occupy  the  broad  rivers  which  flow  into  the 
west  side  of  the  Chesapeake.  All  the  tobacco 
plantations  were  on  these  rivers,  and  the  largest 
vessels  could  come  up  those  deep  streams  and 
load  at  the  private  wharves  of  the  plantations. 

Each  plantation  was  a  kingdom  in  itself,  with 
its  own  mechanics,  carpenters,  coopers,  and 
workmen  of  all  sorts,  even  to  a  greater  degree 
than  the  South  Carolina  plantations,  which  usu 
ally  sent  their  rice  and  other  products  to  the 
merchants  at  Charleston.  But  in  Virginia  each 
planter  was  his  own  merchant  and  shipper,  and 
imported  and  exported  at  his  own  landing-place 
35 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

as  though  he  were  an  independent  state.  Both 
provinces  were  essentially  river  provinces ;  but 
the  Carolina  rivers  all  led  to  Charleston  and 
created  a  merchant  class,  while  the  Virginia 
rivers  led  direcl  to  England  and  dispensed  with 
the  provincial  merchants  and  towns. 

In  1676,  seventy  years  after  Virginia  had 
been  founded,  Jamestown,  its  capital,  consisted 
of  a  state-house,  a  church,  and  only  eighteen 
houses.  It  was  even  smaller  than  it  had  been  in 
Captain  Smith's  time.  One  hundred  years  after 
wards,  in  1776,  Williamsburg,  to  which  the  seat 
of  government  had  been  removed,  was  a  mere 
straggling  village.  Attempts  were  continually 
made  to  bring  towns  into  existence  by  legisla 
tion.  Statutes  were  passed  establishing  them 
at  convenient  cross-roads ;  but  they  met  with 
the  fate  which  usually  befalls  attempts  to  change 
the  essential  nature  of  a  community.  The 
greatest  size  to  which  any  of  them  attained 
was  one  or  two  small  stores,  and  they  became 
known  as  paper  towns. 

Slavery  was  introduced  into  Virginia  in  1619, 
when  a  Dutch  ship  landed  twenty  negroes.  But 
the  people  were  not  particularly  anxious  for 
them.  There  were  no  rice  swamps  to  be  culti 
vated,  as  in  Carolina.  The  climate  was  cooler, 
and  white  men  could  labor  in  the  tobacco  fields 
all  the  year  round.  In  facl:,  the  people  were  at 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

first  rather  opposed  to  slavery  ;  so  that  in  1670, 
fifty  years  after  their  introdu&ion,  there  were 
only  two  thousand  slaves  in  the  colony.  But 
gradually  they  were  found  to  be  valuable  both 
for  work  and  for  sale  in  other  parts  of  the  coun 
try.  In  1756  there  were  one  hundred  and 
twenty  thousand  of  them,  and  after  the  Revolu 
tion  Virginia  became  a  breeding-place  for  slaves 
to  supply  the  rest  of  the  Southern  States. 

But  the  slaves  never  outnumbered  the  whites, 
and  although  there  were  one  or  two  servile  in 
surrections,  there  was  less  dread  of  them  than 
in  South  Carolina.  The  black  population  was 
usually  about  forty  per  cent,  of  the  whole. 

The  laws  against  them  on  the  statute  book 
were  severe  and  very  much  like  those  in  Caro 
lina.  A  slave  was  punished  for  being  found 
off  his  plantation  without  a  certificate  from  his 
master  ;  he  was  not  allowed  to  carry  a  club,  gun, 
or  other  weapon  •  and  if  he  resisted  when  cor 
rected  it  was  not  a  felony  to  kill  him.  If  he  gave 
false  testimony  he  was  to  have  one  ear  nailed  to 
the  pillory,  stand  for  an  hour,  and  then  have  the 
ear  cut  off.  After  that  the  other  ear  was  to  be 
served  in  like  manner,  and,  in  addition,  he  was 
to  receive  thirty-nine  lashes  well  laid  on.  Meet 
ings  and  assemblies  of  negroes  were  forbidden, 
and  incorrigible  runaways  could  be  killed  at 
sight. 

37 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

But  these  laws  were  seldom  enforced,  and  the 
treatment  of  slaves  in  Virginia  is  generally  ad 
mitted  to  have  been  mild  and  kindly,  more  so 
than  anywhere  else  in  the  Southern  colonies, 
and  with  the  usual  result  that  the  slaves  bred 
more  rapidly  and  were  more  profitable  to  their 
masters. 

Indented  servants,  often  called  redemptioners, 
bound  to  labor  for  a  term  of  years  were  numer 
ous,  and  were  sold  like  the  slaves  from  master  to 
master.  Some  had  bound  themselves  in  this 
way  to  pay  for  their  transportation,  some  were 
criminals  or  had  been  kidnapped  in  the  streets 
of  London,  and  some  had  been  rebels,  like  the 
followers  of  the  Duke  of  Monmouth. 

White  and  black  slavery  and  the  plantation 
system  built  up  a  landed  aristocracy  which  was 
an  aristocracy  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word  be 
cause  it  controlled  the  political  power.  It  was 
supported  also  by  a  system  of  primogeniture  and 
entail  more  thorough  than  that  of  England. 
The  eldest  son  inherited  the  land,  and  it  could 
be  entailed  on  him  and  his  descendants  so  as  to 
be  beyond  the  reach  of  creditors.  Not  only 
could  the  land  be  entailed,  but  the  slaves  neces 
sary  to  work  it  could  be  entailed  so  as  to  follow 
the  land.  In  England,  as  early  as  1473,  entails 
could  be  broken  by  bringing  an  adlion  in  court ; 
but  by  an  aft  of  the  House  of  Burgesses  the 
38 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

barring  and  breaking  of  entails  in  Virginia  were 
expressly  forbidden,  and  this  remained  the  law 
until,  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  all  entails 
were  abolished  by  Jefferson  and  his  democratic 
followers. 

The  Virginia  lord  of  his  entailed  land,  with 
slaves  to  work  it,  independent  of  towns  and 
merchants,  making  an  easy  living  by  the  sale  of 
tobacco,  a  royalist  in  politics  and  a  member  of 
the  Church  of  England,  was  a  most  striking  and 
curious  character.  Although  his  system  was 
essentially  an  aristocracy,  he  enjoyed  at  the 
same  time  all  the  benefits  of  liberty  and  free 
government ;  for  the  stockholders  of  the  com 
pany  in  England  which  owned  Virginia  under 
the  charter  from  the  Crown  had  been  a  very 
miscellaneous  and  democratic  body,  composed 
of  grocers,  candle-makers,  and  artisans  in  com 
pany  with  knights,  gentlemen,  noblemen,  and 
members  of  both  houses  of  Parliament.  Un 
successful  in  money-making  in  Virginia,  the 
meetings  of  these  stockholders  became  the 
scenes  of  political  debate.  It  was  a  miniature 
parliament  and,  as  the  royalists  thought,  a  very 
seditious  one. 

Its  debates  seem  to  have  attracted  considerable 

attention,  and  its  importance  and  influence  are 

shown  by  the  contempt  with  which  the  royalist 

writers   speak   of  it,  and    its    discussion  of  the 

39 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

great  questions  of  popular  rights.  The  popular 
or  democratic  party  in  it  seems  to  have  been  in 
the  majority,  and  voted  to  give  Virginia  a  repre 
sentative  government  elected  by  every  freeman 
in  the  colony.  In  1619,  twelve  years  after  the 
founding  of  the  province,  Governor  Yeardley 
issued  writs  for  the  first  American  legislature. 

Virginian  prosperity  dates  from  that  year.  It 
is  a  curious  fa6l  that  women,  free  government, 
universal  suffrage,  and  negro  slavery  were  all  in 
troduced  into  Virginia  at  about  the  same  time. 
The  right  to  vote  was  after  a  time  restricted  to 
freeholders  and  housekeepers ;  but  neither  the 
right  to  vote  nor  representative  government, 
though  sometimes  injured  and  weakened,  was 
ever  seriously  impaired.  The  Virginians  steadily 
developed  them  and  were  developed  by  them. 

So  Virginia  elected  her  own  legislature,  which 
was  called  the  House  of  Burgesses,  and  the 
governor  and  his  council  were  appointed  by  the 
king.  The  burgesses  were  chosen,  two  from 
each  county,  and  at  first  sat  in  the  church  at 
Jamestown  with  their  hats  on  like  the  British 
House  of  Commons.  Their  laws  were  sent  to 
the  king  for  approval,  but  until  he  disapproved 
they  remained  in  force. 

The  governor's  council  was  also  the  general 
court  for  the  hearing  of  causes  civil  and  ecclesi 
astical.  Membership  in  the  council  was  a  great 
40 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

honor,  raised  a  man's  social  position,  and  was 
much  coveted  by  Virginia  families.  Every 
member  of  the  council  was  commissioned  colo 
nel,  and  hence  in  all  probability  arose  the 
custom  in  Virginia  and  the  South  of  applying 
colonel  as  a  complimentary  title  to  prominent 
men.  The  commander  of  the  militia  of  each 
county  was  also  a  colonel,  and  in  the  eyes  of 
his  neighbors  occupied  very  much  the  same 
position  as  the  lord  lieutenant  of  a  county  in 
England. 

Within  five  years  after  the  burgesses  were 
established  the  king  dissolved  the  company  and 
annulled  all  the  charters,  and  for  the  rest  of 
the  colonial  period  Virginia,  like  some  of  the 
other  colonies,  was  under  the  direcl:  government 
of  the  Crown. 

The  excuse  given  for  destroying  the  company 
was  that  it  had  mismanaged  its  affairs  ;  but  there 
seems  to  have  been  very  little  evidence  to  sup 
port  this  charge.  The  company  was  at  that  time 
composed  of  about  a  thousand  stockholders,  and 
they  had  spent  over  one  hundred  and  fifty  thou 
sand  pounds  and  sent  out  nine  thousand  colonists. 
The  real  reason  was,  probably,  that  their  debates 
on  free  government  were  disliked  by  the  royalists 
and  it  was  determined  to  put  a  stop  to  them. 
But  the  representative  government  which  they 
had  given  the  province  was  allowed  to  stand 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

unharmed,  and  within  the  next  few  years  its 
position  was  greatly  strengthened. 

In  1631  the  burgesses  enabled  that  the  gov 
ernor  should  neither  raise  money  nor  levy  war 
except  by  their  consent.  At  the  same  time 
they  were  exempted,  when  in  the  performance 
of  their  duty,  from  arrest  and  judicial  process. 
In  1635  the  usurpations  and  tyranny  of  Governor 
Harvey  became  so  unbearable  that  the  House 
of  Burgesses  thrust  him  out  of  his  government, 
as  the  ancient  record  has  it,  and  appointed  Cap 
tain  John  West  to  aft  as  governor  until  the 
king's  pleasure  should  be  known.  Short  of  ac 
tual  rebellion,  there  could  not  have  been  a  more 
high-handed  measure.  To  depose  the  king's 
duly  appointed  governor  was  the  next  thing  to 
deposing  the  king  himself. 

Charles  I.  was  now  on  the  throne,  and  he 
diredled  that  Governor  Harvey  should  be  re 
stored  ;  but  the  burgesses  never  suffered  for 
their  daring.  They  existed  only  by  sufferance  ; 
they  had  never  been  recognized  or  established 
by  the  king;  and  it  must  have  been  a  tempting 
opportunity  for  annihilating  them.  But  Charles 
I.  was  always  extremely  liberal  with  the  colo 
nies,  and  in  1642  he  formally  recognized  the 
burgesses. 

The  cause  of  the  people  prospered  in  Eng 
land.  Cromwell  and  the  Roundheads  came  and 
42 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

Charles  I.  was  beheaded.  When  Cromwell 
had  secured  England,  he  sent  a  fleet  across  the 
sea  to  secure  Virginia,  where  he  knew  the  peo 
ple  were  royalists  and  opposed  to  him.  The 
men-of-war  appeared  before  Jamestown,  prepa 
rations  for  defence  were  made,  and  everything 
looked  like  battle.  Then  negotiations  were 
entered  into  and  resulted  in  a  treaty  of  peace 
which  is  a  most  remarkable  document.  It  is 
skilfully  drawn,  and  its  tone  is  more  like  an 
agreement  between  independent  nations  than 
the  surrender  of  a  colony. 

Full  indemnity  is  given  for  words  and  afts 
done  or  spoken  against  the  Parliament  of  Eng 
land.  The  surrender  is  acknowledged  to  be  a 
voluntary  aft,  not  forced  or  constrained  by  a 
conquest.  Free  speech  and  free  trade  to  all 
parts  of  the  world  are  guaranteed  to  the  colony. 
No  customs  or  taxes  are  to  be  levied,  and  no 
forts  or  garrisons  are  to  be  maintained  in  Vir 
ginia  without  the  consent  of  her  House  of  Bur 
gesses.  Thus  more  than  a  hundred  years  be 
fore  the  Revolution  the  principle  of  no  taxation 
without  representation  was  declared  by  Virginia 
and  assented  to  by  Great  Britain. 

While  Cromwell  ruled  England,  Virginia,  like 

all  the  other  American  colonies,  was  let  alone, 

and  she  elefted  her  own  governors.     A  dispute 

between  one  of  these  governors  and  the  burgesses 

43 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

shows  the  increasing  power  of  the  popular  as 
sembly.  The  governor  and  his  council  were  ac 
customed  to  have  seats  in  the  House  of  Burgesses, 
and  when  a  law  was  passed  excluding  them, 
Matthews,  who  was  then  governor,  declared  the 
assembly  dissolved.  They  remained  in  session, 
however,  and  passed  a  resolution  to  the  effe£t 
that  they  were  the  representatives  of  the  people 
and  not  dissolvable  by  any  power  in  Virginia 
but  their  own.  To  show  their  strength,  they 
deposed  Governor  Matthews  and  then  re-ele6led 
him.  He  accepted  the  situation,  received  his 
office  from  their  hands,  and  took  the  oath  anew. 

The  event,  however,  that  best  shows  the 
temper  of  the  Virginians  is  Bacon's  rebellion. 
Nathaniel  Bacon  was  born  in  England,  and  came 
to  Virginia  about  four  years  before  he  took  part 
in  the  rebellion.  He  was  of  good  family  and 
education,  and  had  studied  law  at  the  inns  of 
court.  He  was  possessed  of  a  moderate  fortune, 
and  lived  with  his  wife  on  a  plantation  on  the 
upper  waters  of  the  James  River  ;  and  it  is 
interesting  to  note  that  his  rebellion  took  place 
in  1676,  exaftly  a  hundred  years  before  the 
Revolution. 

Bacon  had  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  creating 
the  rebellion.  It  arose  from  causes  beyond  his 
control  ;  but  when  the  time  for  an  outbreak  ar 
rived  he  became  its  leader.  The  colonists  had 
44 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

for  some  time  considered  themselves  oppressed 
and  injured  by  the  British  government.  Their 
first  complaint  was  the  navigation  afts,  which 
prohibited  the  colony  from  trading  with  any 
country  but  England  and  in  any  vessels  but  Eng 
lish  vessels.  Every  hogshead  of  tobacco  and 
every  other  export  must  go  to  England  for  sale 
and  pay  heavy  duty.  The  Virginians,  when 
they  surrendered  to  Cromwell,  had  stipulated 
that  they  should  be  free  to  trade  with  all  the 
world,  and  they  claimed  that  this  clause  had 
relieved  them  from  the  obnoxious  provisions  of 
the  navigation  afts. 

During  the  Commonwealth  times  they  had 
little  to  complain  of,  for  Cromwell  let  them 
govern  themselves.  But  when  Charles  II.  was 
restored  to  the  throne  he  re-ena6led  the  naviga 
tion  afts  and  they  were  enforced.  The  Vir 
ginians  tried  to  avoid  them  by  smuggling,  but  the 
king's  officers  were  vigilant,  and  prosecutions  and 
penalties  increased  the  discontent. 

The  Virginians  tried  to  increase  the  price  of 
tobacco  by  diminishing  the  crop.  They  passed 
laws  regulating  the  quantity  of  tobacco  that 
should  be  planted,  and  secret  parties  were  organ 
ized  to  go  about  and  destroy  the  young  plants. 
But  these  methods  were  of  little  avail.  The 
price  went  lower  and  lower  ;  but  no  matter  how 
low  it  went,  the  tobacco  must  go  to  England 
45 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

and  the  duty  be  taken  from  the  price.  Vir 
ginia  incomes  were  diminished,  and  this  was 
undoubtedly  one  of  the  principal  causes  of  the 
rebellion. 

Another  grievance  was  the  conduct  of  Charles 
II.  in  giving  away  the  land.  At  one  time  he 
had  given  to  some  of  his  favorites  the  whole 
country  between  the  Rappahannock  and  the 
Potomac.  In  1673  he  gave  to  Lord  Arlington 
and  Lord  Culpeper  the  right  for  thirty-one 
years  to  all  the  quit-rents  and  lands  escheated  to 
the  Crown.  They  were  to  receive  the  revenues 
of  the  colony,  appoint  the  public  officers,  lay  off 
new  counties,  and  present  to  parishes.  In  effecl: 
they  were  to  be  the  proprietors  of  Virginia. 

An  excessive  tax  of  one  hundred  pounds  of 
tobacco  on  each  inhabitant  had  to  be  levied  to 
send  commissioners  to  England  to  have  this  grant 
modified  or  to  buy  it  back  from  the  rapacious 
noblemen  who  held  it.  The  colonists  were 
naturally  indignant  at  such  treatment,  and  they 
had  a  further  cause  of  complaint  in  the  ereftion 
of  expensive  forts,  which  were  no  protection, 
because  the  Indians,  by  aid  of  the  dense  forests, 
easily  passed  round  them.  They  also  com 
plained  of  the  recent  restriction  of  the  right  of 
suffrage  to  householders.  The  restriction  of 
the  suffrage,  however,  was  an  a6l  of  their  own 
legislature. 

46 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

The  truth  was  that  the  Virginians  were  ready 
to  complain  of  anything.  They  had  conquered 
the  wilderness,  were  growing  rich,  and  began 
to  feel  their  independence.  It  was  this  con 
sciousness  of  wealth  and  success  that  was  the 
most  potent  cause  of  the  rebellion.  They  were 
in  a  state  of  feeling  that  easily  took  fire  from 
oppression.  They  did  not  care  to  be  governed 
at  all,  still  less  to  be  misgoverned. 

Sir  William  Berkeley  was  governor  at  this 
time.  He  was  a  polished,  agreeable  man,  of 
the  cavalier  class,  with  all  the  arts  of  a  courtier 
and  a  diplomat.  He  kept  open  house,  lived 
profusely,  spent  a  large  part  of  his  private  for 
tune  in  improving  the  colony,  and  had  the  con 
fidence  and  to  a  great  extent  the  affedlion  of 
the  people.  But  he  was  a  haughty,  arrogant  old 
royalist,  thoroughly  convinced  of  his  own  im 
portance,  and  a  most  bigoted  conservative.  He 
was  a  king's  man,  and  blind,  unquestioning  devo 
tion  to  royalty  was  part  of  his  nature. 

Indian  hostilities  gave  an  occasion  for  the  re 
bellion.  A  force  was  sent  against  them  under 
the  command  of  Sir  Henry  Chicheley,  but  just 
as  Chicheley  was  about  to  march  Governor 
Berkeley  revoked  his  commission.  It  has  been 
said  that  Berkeley  feared  that  the  expedition 
would  interfere  with  his  monopoly  of  the  Indian 
trade  in  beaver  skins,  but  this  is  very  unlikely. 
47 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

Berkeley  was  not  a  sordid  man  ;  he  had  the  wel 
fare  of  the  colony  at  heart,  and,  so  far  as  his 
own  interests  were  concerned,  they  would  be 
apt  to  suffer  severely  if  the  depredations  of  the 
Indians  were  left  unchecked. 

There  was  something  in  his  mind  more  im 
portant  than  beaver  skins.  He  knew  that  the 
colony  was  in  a  seditious  state  and  ripe  for  a 
revolt,  and  he  feared  that  when  Chicheley's  men 
had  been  successful  against  the  Indians  they 
would  be  turned  into  a  sort  of  parliamentary  army 
and  overthrow  the  power  of  the  governor. 

His  apprehension  was  justified  by  the  event. 
There  was  an  outburst  of  indignation  among  the 
people  against  the  ruler  who  would  not  protect 
them  from  the  savages.  This  was  Bacon's  op 
portunity.  The  Indian  attacks  continued  until 
their  viftims  numbered  hundreds.  The  people 
petitioned  to  be  led  against  them  under  any  com 
mander  whom  the  governor  would  appoint,  and 
as  he  would  appoint  no  one,  they  elefted  Bacon 
for  their  leader,  but  the  governor  refused  to  give 
him  a  commission.  Then  Bacon  took  the  re 
sponsibility  on  himself,  and,  calling  his  volun 
teers  together,  promised  them  that  when  the 
Indians  were  disposed  of  he  would  attend  to  the 
questions  of  civil  rights  and  taxes. 

He  was  successful  against  the  Indians  and  won 
a  victory  over  them  at  the  battle  of  Bloody  Run, 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

not  far  from  the  present  site  of  Richmond.  But 
he  had  no  sooner  gone  on  this  expedition  than 
Berkeley  declared  him  a  rebel  and  started  in 
pursuit.  The  pursuit  was  not  far,  however,  for 
Jamestown  and  the  lower  counties  joined  the 
rebellion  and  Berkeley  had  to  come  back  to 
quiet  them. 

He  quieted  them  by  yielding.  They  de 
manded  a  new  assembly  of  the  burgesses  and 
he  gave  it  to  them.  The  present  one  had  re 
mained  unchanged  for  fifteen  years  ;  had  been, 
in  faft,  another  Long  Parliament,  was  strongly 
cavalier  in  sentiment,  and  had  passed  the  acl 
restricting  the  suffrage.  Berkeley  issued  writs 
for  a  new  assembly.  Bacon  became  a  member 
of  it,  and  so  little  was  the  limitation  on  suffrage 
regarded  that  men  who  were  not  householders 
voted,  and  in  some  instances  were  elefted  mem 
bers.  The  new  burgesses  repealed  the  limita 
tion  on  the  suffrage  and  made  some  provisions 
against  fraudulent  tax  levies  and  fraudulent  elec 
tion  returns  by  sheriffs  ;  but  they  were  not  a 
very  revolutionary  body,  and  their  reforms  were 
neither  violent  nor  far-reaching. 

Bacon  had  been  arrested  the  moment  he  ap 
peared  to  take  his  seat  with  the  burgesses. 
Berkeley  asked  him  if  he  was  still  a  gentleman, 
and,  on  being  assured  that  he  was,  paroled  him. 
He  was  then  persuaded  to  repent  and  read  a 

VOL.  I.— 4  49 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

confession  of  his  guilt.  Whereupon  Berkeley 
pardoned  him,  restored  him  to  his  seat  in  the 
council, — a  very  politic  aft  to  keep  him  out  of 
the  burgesses, — and,  in  addition,  promised  him  a 
commission  as  genera!  to  go  against  the  Indians. 
,t  The  commission  was,  of  course,  not  granted, 
and  Bacon  stole  out  of  Jamestown,  collected 
about  five  hundred  armed  men,  and,  having 
stirred  them  with  one  of  his  eloquent  harangues, 
marched  them  to  the  State-House.  The  aged 
governor  came  down,  bared  his  breast  before  the 
multitude,  and  said  he  would  rather  be  shot  than 
grant  a  commission  to  such  a  rebel.  He  offered 
to  settle  the  question  by  fighting  Bacon  in  single 
combat,  but  Bacon  declined.  He  wanted  not, 
he  said,  the  governor's  blood,  but  only  per 
mission  to  fight  the  heathen  horde  who  were 
murdering  his  countrymen  every  day.  Again 
Berkeley  yielded.  He  not  only  gave  the  com 
mission,  but,  together  with  the  burgesses  and 
council,  signed  a  paper  to  be  sent  to  the  king, 
extolling  Bacon  and  commending  his  loyalty  and 
patriotism,  so  that  Bacon's  triumph  was  com 
plete. 

He  again  started  in  pursuit  of  the  Indians,  and 
his  success  was  greater  than  before.  By  a  thor 
ough  campaign  he  hunted  them  out  of  every 
thicket  and  swamp,  and  the  colony  was  relieved 
from  danger.  Meanwhile  Berkeley  resorted  to 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

his  old  taclics,  proclaimed  him  a  rebel,  and  then 
summoned  a  convention  of  the  people  in  Glouces 
ter  County.  But  although  he  addressed  the 
meeting  in  person,  they  declared  before  his  face 
in  favor  of  Bacon,  and  used  the  very  natural 
argument  that  they  could  not  call  a  man  a  rebel 
who  was  at  that  moment  defending  them  from 
the  Indians.  Berkeley  could  not  raise  a  suffi 
cient  force  to  oppose  Bacon,  so  he  fled  across 
Chesapeake  Bay  to  the  Eastern  Shore,  then  called 
the  Kingdom  of  Accomac. 

When  Bacon  heard  that  the  governor  had  fled, 
he  marched  his  men  to  a  place  called  Middle 
Plantation,  which  afterwards  became  Williams- 
burg,  the  capital  of  the  colony.  While  there  he 
was  advised  by  his  friends  to  depose  Berkeley 
and  appoint  Sir  Henry  Chicheley  in  his  place. 
But  Bacon  had  a  plan  of  his  own. 

He  issued  what  he  called  a  Remonstrance, 
setting  forth  the  grievances  of  the  people  and 
calling  for  a  mass-meeting.  The  men  of  Vir 
ginia  assembled  and  Bacon  completely  con 
trolled  them.  He  actually  persuaded  them  to 
bind  themselves  by  an  oath  that  until  the  king 
could  be  communicated  with  they  would  not  only 
rise  in  arms  against  Berkeley,  but  also  against  any 
force  which  should  be  sent  from  England  to  his 
aid.  These  daring  Virginians,  like  the  South 
Carolinians  in  their  revolution  of  1719,  intended 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

to  fight  the  king's  forces  until  they  could  get  a 
message  to  the  king  showing  him  the  real  state  of 
affairs.  This  whole  movement  was  indeed  very 
much  like  the  South  Carolina  revolution  which 
occurred  nearly  fifty  years  afterwards. 

Bacon  issued  writs  for  the  election  of  a  new 
House  of  Burgesses,  and  assumed  full  powers  in 
himself  on  the  theory  that  Berkeley,  by  his 
flight,  had  abdicated  the  government,  and  he 
argued  to  his  followers  that  they  were  the  loyal 
party  and  Berkeley  the  rebel  and  traitor. 

He  made  another  successful  expedition  against 
the  Indians  and  was  beginning  to  settle  himself 
in  power  when  Berkeley  returned  from  Accomac 
with  a  thousand  men  and  seventeen  vessels  and 
entered  Jamestown.  Bacon  immediately  besieged 
the  little  town,  and,  throwing  intrenchments 
across  the  narrow  neck  which  connected  it  with 
the  mainland,  imprisoned  Berkeley  within  it.  To 
proteft  his  men  while  they  were  at  work  on  the 
trenches,  Bacon  collected  from  the  neighboring 
plantations  some  of  the  wives  of  prominent  fol 
lowers  of  Berkeley  and  placed  them  between 
himself  and  the  enemy. 

An  assault  was  made  by  Berkeley  on  the 
trenches,  but  it  was  an  unequal  contest.  His 
followers  from  Accomac  were  a  rabble  of  fisher 
men  and  loose  characters  whose  only  motive  was 
plunder.  The  .rebels  were  householders  and 
52 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

men  of  substance  who  were  fighting  for  a  prin 
ciple.  They  repulsed  Berkeley,  drove  him  back 
into  the  town  and  from  the  town  to  his  ships,  and 
then  they  burnt  the  town  so  that  the  Berkeleyites 
could  harbor  there  no  more.  Berkeley  retreated 
down  the  river,  and  Bacon  was  again  successful. 

And  now  word  was  brought  to  him  that  he 
was  threatened  from  the  north.  Colonel  Brent 
was  marching  on  him  with  a  thousand  men 
from  the  Potomac.  Again  he  called  together  his 
soldiers  and  addressed  them.  They  had  become 
like  the  soldiers  of  Cromwell :  success  had  given 
them  a  strong  taste  for  fighting.  They  were 
eager  for  battle,  but  battle  was  denied  them. 
Before  they  had  come  within  striking  distance 
of  Brent  his  force  melted  away  and  most  of  his 
men  went  over  to  Bacon. 

A  few  hundred  men  in  Gloucester  County  still 
considered  themselves  royalists.  Bacon  assem 
bled  them  in  convention  and  explained  the  situ 
ation.  They  seemed,  he  said,  to  desire  to  be 
saved,  and  yet  would  do  nothing  to  secure  their 
salvation.  He  would  have  all  or  nothing  ;  they 
must  be  either  wholly  for  him  or  wholly  against 
him ;  they  must  either  take  his  oath  or  fight 
him.  His  armed  veterans  stood  by  as  a  grim 
background  to  this  argument,  and  the  oath  was 
taken. 

Berkeley  had  again  retreated  to  Accomac. 
53 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

Bacon  was  determined  to  destroy  the  last  vestige 
of  opposition  to  the  popular  cause,  and  planned 
an  expedition  against  him.  But  in  the  midst  of 
his  preparations  he  died.  He  had  contracted  a 
fever  in  the  trenches  before  Jamestown,  and 
some  time  in  October,  1676,  this  soldier  and  ora 
tor  and  leader  of  the  people  passed  away  and  was 
buried  in  secret  by  his  friends.  He  began  the 
rebellion  in  May  and  had  finished  it  in  O6tober. 
From  comparative  obscurity  this  youth  steps  into 
history,  makes  himself  famous  and  successful  for 
five  months,  and  then  dies. 

So  soon  as  Bacon  was  gone  the  revolution 
collapsed.  There  was  no  one  who  could  fill  his 
place  even  for  a  moment.  Berkeley  returned  from 
Accomac  and  almost  without  a  struggle  took 
possession  of  the  colony.  Then  his  vengeance 
began.  He  executed  twenty-three  of  the  promi 
nent  rebels.  He  had  them  shot  or  hung  in 
chains  and  left  their  bodies  swinging  from  the 
gibbets  as  a  warning.  He  reviled  and  taunted 
them  before  their  death,  and  on  one  occasion 
basely  insulted  a  woman  who  offered  to  die  in 
place  of  her  husband. 

The  old  man  had  a  craze  for  blood,  and  dis 
gusted  even  his  own  party  and  the  king  whom 
he  thought  he  was  serving.  He  would  have 
slaughtered  half  the  country  if  the  burgesses  and 
a  commission  that  had  been  sent  out  from  Eng- 
54 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

land  to  investigate  the  rebellion  had  not  stopped 
him.  All  his  agreeab'le  qualities  seemed  to  have 
turned  to  bitterness,  and  the  love  the  Virginians 
once  bore  him  had  certainly  turned  to  hate. 

When  they  heard  of  his  recall  a  few  months 
after  the  rebellion,  they  celebrated  the  event 
with  an  illumination.  On  reaching  England  he 
sought  the  king, — the  king  to  whom  he  had  de 
voted  his  life,  and  in  whose  divine  power  he 
believed.  But  Charles  II.,  when  asked  if  he 
would  see  him,  said,  "  That  old  fool  has  hanged 
more  men  in  that  naked  country  than  I  have 
done  for  the  murder  of  my  father."  He  never 
granted  Berkeley  an  audience,  and  the  old  man 
died  of  a  broken  heart. 

Bacon's  rebellion  destroyed  many  fine  lives 
and  apparently  accomplished  nothing.  It  was 
certainly  a  strange  event,  and  implies  an  immense 
amount  of  independence  and  hardihood  in  these 
Virginians,  who,  without  the  aid  of  any  other 
colony  or  nation,  rushed  recklessly  against  the 
whole  British  empire  and  committed  ads  which 
they  knew  were  treason  and  would  be  punished 
as  such.  The  whole  population  numbered  at 
that  time  only  about  forty  thousand  ;  and  with 
this  in  mind  we  can  the  more  easily  understand 
the  outbreak  in  the  Revolution,  when  the  popu 
lation  of  Virginia  was  more  than  three  hundred 
thousand. 

55 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

The  story  of  Bacon's  rebellion  was  for  a  long 
time  lost  to  the  world.  The  uprising  had  been 
completely  crushed  and  for  many  years  was  a 
forbidden  subject  of  conversation.  By  the  time 
the  eye-witnesses  of  it  were  dead,  only  a  vague 
tradition  survived,  and  that  tradition  was  colored 
and  distorted  by  the  influence  of  royalists.  It 
was  generally  believed  that  the  rebellion  had 
been  a  petty  affair  without  adequate  cause  and 
without  the  least  success,  and  the  name  of  Bacon 
was  held  in  infamy. 

It  was  not  until  more  than  a  hundred  years 
had  passed  that  the  subject  was  placed  in  its  true 
light  by  a  manuscript  discovered  in  England  by 
the  American  minister  and  made  public  by 
Thomas  Jefferson.  This  document  showed  that 
the  revolt  was  by  no  means  unimportant  and  by 
no  means  without  cause,  and  further  investiga 
tions  have  made  this  view  more  certain.  The 
occurrence  of  such  a  powerful  rebellion  shows 
that  seventy  years  of  tobacco  raising  and  planta 
tion  life  had  developed  a  remarkable  community 
of  people.  No  other  American  colony  made 
such  an  open  and  desperate  revolt  before  the 
time  of  the  Revolution,  and  it  was  the  only 
revolt  accompanied  by  bloodshed. 

For  some  years  after  the  rebellion  Virginia 
suffered  from  very  evil  governors.  Culpeper 
swindled  the  people  by  raising  and  lowering 
56 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

the  value  of  the  coin,  Lord  Howard  swindled 
by  a  new  seal,  and  Sir  Francis  Nicholson  and 
others  contrived  petty  tyrannies  or  means  of 
enriching  themselves.  There  was  none  of  the 
contentment  and  easy  relations  with  the  British 
government  which  prevailed  in  South  Carolina. 
The  commercial  restraints  and  most  of  the 
troubles  which  had  caused  the  rebellion  con 
tinued.  Instead  of  receiving  bounties  on  its 
produfts,  like  South  Carolina,  Virginia's  great 
staple,  tobacco,  was  taxed,  and  in  1750  the  an 
nual  revenue  to  Great  Britain  from  this  tax  was 
one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds. 

Virginia  was  managed  by  the  mother  country 
as  a  mere  source  of  revenue,  without  regard  to 
her  welfare  or  discontent.  We  find  one  gov 
ernor  recommending  that  an  aft  of  Parliament 
should  be  passed  forbidding  the  Virginians  to 
make  their  own  clothes.  If  the  British  mer 
chants  complained  of  one  of  the  colony's  laws, 
it  was  promptly  suspended.  The  disputes  be 
tween  the  royal  governors  and  the  colonists  in 
the  next  hundred  years  were  petty  but  frequent. 
Discontent  and  complaint  became  the  habit  of 
the  Virginian  mind  ;  and  there  might,  perhaps, 
have  been  another  rebellion  if  there  had  been 
another  Bacon  to  lead  it. 

On  the  accession  of  William  and  Mary  to  the 
throne,  the  burgesses,  by  their  agents  in  England, 
57 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

asked  many  favors  of  their  majesties,  and  among 
other  things  announced  their  familiar  doctrine 
that  no  tax  or  imposition  should  be  laid  upon  the 
colony,  except  by  its  consent.  But  they  gained 
little  or  nothing  from  William  and  Mary's  reign. 

When  Anne  came  to  the  throne  their  political 
affairs  were  quieter ;  the  governors  from  that 
time  were  somewhat  better ;  and  two  of  them 
— Alexander  Spotswood  and  William  Gooch — 
had  long  and  prosperous  administrations.  It 
was  in  this  hundred  years  that  followed  Bacon's 
rebellion  that  the  real  Virginia  was  developed. 
The  population  in  that  time  increased  from 
thirty-eight  thousand  whites  and  two  thousand 
blacks  to  three  hundred  thousand  whites  and 
two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  negroes ;  it 
often  doubled  itself  every  twenty-seven  years ; 
and  this  increase  was  largely  a  natural  one  of 
native  births,  and  was  very  little  assisted  by  im 
migration,  except  of  negroes. 

This  large  population  of  over  half  a  million 
was  scattered  on  plantations,  and,  as  in  the  early 
days  of  the  province,  there  were  no  towns  of 
any  size,  except  Norfolk,  near  Cape  Henry, 
which  contained  some  years  before  the  Revo 
lution  about  seven  thousand  people.  James 
town  had  dwindled  to  almost  nothing,  and  the 
paper  towns  which  the  burgesses  tried  so  hard 
to  establish  had  not  succeeded. 
58 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

Williamsburg,  which  had  become  the  capital, 
contained  the  College  of  William  and  Mary, 
about  two  hundred  houses,  and  a  dozen  families 
of  the  gentry,  who  made  it  their  home.  There 
were  few  doctors  deserving  the  name,  and  no 
lawyers,  except  a  few  pettifoggers  and  sharpers, 
for  the  litigation  of  the  province  was  unimpor 
tant.  Towards  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  how 
ever,  the  great  increase  of  population  and  produces 
and  the  growth  of  wealth  made  business  affairs 
more  complicated,  and  at  that  time  Mason, 
Wythe,  Patrick  Henry,  and  Jefferson  became 
lawyers,  and  there  were  others  of  good  repute. 

The  only  profession  of  importance  was  the 
clergy.  The  Church  of  England  was  established 
by  law,  was  part  of  the  governing  machinery  of 
the  province,  adherence  to  it  was  the  pathway 
to  social  and  political  eminence,  and  it  became 
more  of  a  power  than  in  Maryland  and  South 
Carolina,  where  it  was  also  established. 

Dissenters  were  persecuted  and  driven  out  of 
the  colony.  In  1642,  when  Boston  sent  down  a 
supply  of  Puritan  ministers  to  take  care  of  such 
dissenters  as  were  already  in  Virginia,  the  bur 
gesses  passed  an  act  banishing  them,  and  it  was 
rigidly  enforced.  But  after  Bacon's  rebellion  the 
Presbyterians,  Baptists,  and  Quakers  seem  to  have 
quietly  increased  in  numbers  in  spite  of  efforts  to 
keep  them  out,  until  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution 
59 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

they  included,  according  to  Jefferson's  estimate, 
two-thirds  of  the  population. 

If  this  estimate  is  correft  it  shows  an  immense 
change,  and  in  fact  almost  a  complete  reversal  of 
the  religious  feeling  of  Virginia.  One  hundred 
years  before,  or  even  seventy  five  years  before, 
if  we  can  believe  the  accounts  of  travellers,  the 
dissenting  sefts  were  a  mere  handful  and  the  in 
fluence  of  Episcopacy  was  overwhelming.  The 
change  was  no  doubt  largely  due  to  the  great 
revival  which  was  aroused  in  all  the  colonies  by 
the  preaching  of  the  Wesleys  and  Whitefield 
about  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  dissenters  in  Virginia  had  always  bitterly 
hated  the  established  church,  and  after  the  Revo 
lution  they  had  their  day  of  vengeance.  They 
not  only  disestablished  it,  but  tore  it  out  root 
and  branch.  Its  property,  glebe  lands,  church 
buildings,  and  sacred  vessels  were  taken  away 
from  it  and  put  to  profane  uses ;  a  baptismal 
font  was  in  one  instance,  it  is  said,  used  as  a 
horse-trough.  When,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
present  century,  Chief-Justice  Marshall  was 
asked  to  subscribe  money  towards  the  revival 
of  the  church,  he  gave  the  money,  but  said  it 
was  useless ;  the  church  was  dead. 

Jefferson,  Madison,  and  many  of  the  best  men 
in  Virginia  took  part  in  this  disestablishment. 
They  meant,  however,  to  accomplish  only  dis- 
60 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

establishment,  and  not  robbery  ;  and  their  reason 
for  disestablishment  was  the  valid  one  that  a 
state  church  was  inconsistent  with  republican 
institutions.  But  the  church  had  been  so  in 
tolerant,  some  of  its  clergy  had  led  such  loose 
lives,  and  so  many  of  them  had  been  tories  in  the 
Revolution,  that  the  vengeance  of  the  majority 
of  the  people  could  not  be  restrained. 

In  colonial  times  the  most  inefficient  clergy 
men  were  the  ones  who  could  be  most  easily 
induced  to  leave  England  and  accept  the  hard 
ships  of  the  wilderness.  In  some  instances  men 
who  had  been  discarded  by  the  church  in  Eng 
land  obtained  livings  in  the  colony.  These 
men,  as  a  class,  not  only  lacked  zeal  and  spirit 
ual  life,  but  many  of  them  were  addifted  to 
open  vice. 

Horse-racing,  gambling,  and  drunken  revels 
were  among  their  sins.  One  of  them  was  for 
many  years  president  of  a  jockey  club.  They 
encouraged  among  the  people  the  custom  of 
celebrating  the  sacrament  of  baptism  with  fes 
tivities  and  dancing,  in  which  the  officiating 
clergyman  often  took  a  part,  a  custom  which, 
by  the  way,  shows  some  signs  of  returning  in 
England.  One  of  them  is  said  to  have  called  out 
to  his  church-warden  during  the  communion, 
"  Here,  George,  this  bread  is  not  fit  for  a  dog." 
Another  fought  a  duel  in  the  grave-yard  ;  and 
61 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

still  another  thrashed  his  vestry, — as  no  doubt 
they  deserved,  for  it  is  said  that  the  vestries  in 
Virginia  exercised  too  much  power, — and  the 
next  day  preached  from  the  text,  "  And  I  con 
tended  with  them,  and  cursed  them,  and  smote 
certain  of  them,  and  plucked  off  their  hair." 

This  liveliness  of  disposition  was  not  so  much 
of  a  scandal  then  as  it  would  be  now,  because 
everybody  was  rather  gay ;  and,  moreover,  they 
were  not  all  of  this  sort.  Those  who  were 
natives  of  the  colony  and  had  been  educated  at 
the  College  of  William  and  Mary  are  admitted  to 
have  been  good  men.  The  faults  of  those  who 
were  reckless  and  dissolute  have  been  so  much 
dwelt  upon  that  many  people  have  an  impression 
that  every  parish  in  Virginia  was  presided  over 
by  a  drunkard  or  a  gambler  ;  but  it  is  certain  that 
there  were  earnest  and  useful  men  among  them. 
Many  of  them  were  tutors  for  the  children  on 
the  neighboring  plantations,  and  not  a  few  of 
the  most  prominent  colonial  Virginians,  like 
Madison,  Jefferson,  and  Marshall,  received  a 
fairly  good  education  at  their  hands. 

Each  one  of  them  usually  had  a  plantation  or 
glebe,  which  he  cultivated  and  lived  upon,  and 
it  was  entirely  possible  for  some  of  them  to 
indulge  in  fox-hunting  and  many  of  the  sports 
of  their  neighbors  and  be  more  moral  and  useful 
men  for  it.  Indeed,  it  is  doubtful  if  they  were, 
62 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

on  the  whole,  any  worse  than  the  clergy  of  that 
time  in  England,  where  a  large  part  of  the  cor 
ruption  which  had  caused  the  Reformation  was 
still  retained  ;  and  it  has  never  yet  been  satis 
factorily  shown  that  the  old-fashioned  sporting 
parson  was  in  any  way  inferior  to  his  modern 
ritualistic  successor. 

Religion  was  not  as  powerful  an  element  in 
the  formation  of  the  community  as  it  was  in 
Massachusetts.  The  churchmanship  of  the  Vir 
ginians  would  now  be  called  very  low.  They 
often  omitted  the  use  of  the  prayer-book  alto 
gether,  and  it  is  said  that  the  surplice  was  un 
known  in  the  colony  for  the  first  hundred  years. 

Governor  Spotswood  describes  the  Virgin 
ians  of  his  time  as  living  "  in  a  gentlemanly 
conformity  with  the  Church  of  England,"  a 
phrase  which  is  more  expressive  than  volumes 
of  writing.  Gentleman  was  always  a  powerful 
word  in  Virginia.  But  the  church,  neverthe 
less,  had  a  decided  influence  on  them,  and  that 
quietude,  good  taste,  refinement,  and  freedom 
from  cant  which  marked  Washington,  Madison, 
Jefferson,  Marshall,  and  the  other  prominent 
men  of  the  colony  were  its  results. 

There  has  always  been  much  discussion  among 
writers  on  Virginia  as  to  the  comparative  in 
fluence  on  the  province  of  the  Puritan  and  the 
Episcopalian,  the  roundhead  and  the  cavalier. 
63 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

Some  give  all  the  influence  to  the  cavalier  and 
the  Churchman.  Others  give  all  to  the  Puritan 
and  the  roundhead.  That  there  was  some  Puritan 
influence,  especially  during  the  time  of  the  com 
monwealth,  when  the  governors  of  Virginia  were 
Puritans,  is  undeniable.  But  on  the  whole  the 
cavaliers  were  in  the  ascendant,  and  they  poured 
into  the  colony  by  thousands  even  at  the  very 
time  when  it  had  Puritan  governors.  Grigsby, 
however,  in  a  passage  which  has  often  been 
quoted,  resents  with  indignation  this  stain  on 
the  honor  of  Virginia  : 

"  The  cavalier  was  essentially  a  slave,  a  compound 
slave,  a  slave  to  the  king  and  a  slave  to  the  church.  I 
look  with  contempt  on  the  miserable  figment  which  seeks 
to  trace  the  distinguishing  points  of  the  Virginia  character 
to  the  influence  of  those  butterflies  of  the  British  aris 
tocracy." 

But  nearly  all  the  great  Virginians  were  de 
scended  from  cavaliers.  Washington  was  the 
great-grandson  of  one  of  them,  and  Madison, 
Monroe,  the  Randolphs,  Richard  Henry  Lee, 
Pendleton,  and  Mason  were  also  descendants  of 
royalists.  These  men  were  not  butterflies  ;  and 
the  followers  of  Bacon  who  fell  into  the  hands 
of  that  arch-royalist  Governor  Berkeley  would 
hardly  have  described  him  as  a  beautiful  and 
harmless  inseft. 

Equally  futile  is  the  charge  sometimes  made 
64 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

against  the  Virginia  people  that  they  were  the 
descendants  of  adventurers,  bankrupts,  and  felons, 
and  instead  of  being,  as  they  claimed,  accom 
plished  gentlemen,  were  only  accomplished  jail 
birds. 

The  early  settlers  were  no  doubt  a  shiftless 
set,  and  in  after-years  some  convicted  felons  were 
sent  over  by  the  British  government  in  spite  of 
the  earnest  protests  of  the  colonists.  But  the 
felon  importation  was  stopped.  They  numbered 
altogether  only  about  two  thousand,  and,  like 
some  of  the  early  adventurers,  being  shiftless  and 
improvident,  seldom  had  families,  and  in  time 
left  few  if  any  descendants.  One  of  the  other 
colonies,  Maryland,  received  twenty  thousand 
of  these  low  characters  and  was  greatly  injured 
by  them,  but  Virginia,  like  Massachusetts,  suc 
ceeded  in  keeping  them  out. 

A  considerable  number  of  indented  servants, 
or  redemptioners  as  they  were  called,  came  to 
Virginia,  but  they  were  not  an  inferior  class  of 
men.  They  were  numerous  in  all  parts  of  the 
colonies  except  New  England,  where  there  were 
scarcely  any  of  them.  They  were  mostly  people 
who  sold  their  services  for  a  term  of  years  to 
pay  for  their  passage  to  America.  They  were 
bound  by  law  to  serve  the  stipulated  time,  and 
seem  now  as  if  they  had  occupied  the  position 
of  white  slaves. 

VOL.  l.-5  65 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

But  they  were  not  so  regarded,  and  there  is 
not  the  slightest  trace  of  any  stigma  being  cast 
upon  them.  They  were,  as  a  rule,  merely  men 
without  means,  who  had  adopted  a  recognized 
method  of  the  time  to  pay  for  a  service  rendered 
them.  Many  of  them  were  founders  of  respect 
able  families  whose  descendants  are  still  in  the 
country ;  and  there  were  instances  of  gentle 
men's  sons  who  had  got  themselves  in  a  scrape 
or  lost  property  resorting  to  this  method  for  a 
fresh  start  in  life. 

When  they  had  once  bound  themselves  they 
could  be  sold  from  one  person  to  another  until 
their  term  expired,  and  in  this  respeft  they  were 
like  slaves.  There  were  also  some  of  them  who 
resembled  slaves  in  having  been  kidnapped  in 
the  streets  of  London  by  ruffians,  who  sold  them 
to  the  captains  of  vessels  bound  for  the  colonies, 
a  nefarious  traffic  which  the  public  opinion  of 
the  time  could  not  suppress.  Others  were  po 
litical  prisoners,  rebels  who  had  assisted  some 
of  the  pretenders  to  the  English  throne,  and, 
instead  of  being  executed  or  imprisoned,  the 
government  sold  them  as  redemptioners  to  the 
captains  or  other  speculators  who  traded  with 
the  colonies.  Poverty  or  misfortune  was  gener 
ally  the  only  crime  of  a  redemptioner,  and  very 
often  he  was  a  useful  man. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  vast  majority  of 
66 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

the  Virginians  were  of  the  very  best  blood  of 
England.  The  cavaliers  were  among  the  best 
of  their  class,  and  the  dissenters,  although  not 
so  severe  and  capable  as  the  Puritans  of  New 
England,  made  good  colonists.  There  was  a 
large  Scotch-Irish  immigration  which  went  out 
on  the  frontier,  where  their  descendants  can  still 
be  found ;  and  there  were  also  some  Huguenots, 
from  which  such  families  as  Maury,  Dupuy, 
Cocke,  Chastaine,  Trabue,  Fontaine,  and  Marye 
are  descended. 

Although  men  who  had  been  royalists  in  Eng 
land  were  the  preponderating  influence  in  Vir 
ginia,  and  the  structure  of  society  was  that  of  a 
landed  aristocracy,  yet  the  spirit  of  the  people 
was  always  strongly  on  the  side  of  liberty.  The 
large  royalist  migration  a  few  years  previous  to 
the  breaking  out  of  Bacon's  rebellion  appears  to 
have  had  little  or  no  influence  in  checking  that 
event.  In  fa6l,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
many  of  these  royalists,  after  a  short  residence  in 
the  colony,  became  arrant  rebels. 

Self-interest  soon  changes  a  man's  political 
belief.  The  Virginians  admired  the  king  and 
the  nobility,  but  they  liked  their  own  rights 
better.  They  looked  back  towards  old  England 
with  fondness;  they  loved  its  ancient  customs, 
the  pride  and  pomp  of  its  aristocracy,  the  dig 
nity  and  solemnity  of  the  ritual  of  its  church, 
67 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

and  they  strove  as  far  as  possible  to  reproduce 
these  things  in  the  wilderness.  But  beyond  that 
they  would  not  go.  When  it  came  to  the  ques 
tion  of  losing  money  or  property  or  a  freeman's 
right,  the  king  might  count  on  them  as  enemies. 
Their  devotion  to  royalty  was  merely  a  matter 
of  taste. 

The  conditions  of  life  in  Virginia  were  those 
which  the  political  and  social  economists  assure 
us  can  never  lead  to  prosperity  or  make  a  people 
great.  There  were  no  manufacturing  industries, 
no  merchants  or  tradesmen,  few  mechanics,  ex 
cept  of  the  rudest  sort,  no  money  except  tobacco, 
and  all  the  methods  of  exchange  and  business 
were  cumbersome  and  slow.  The  country  was 
capable  of  producing  iron,  indigo,  lumber,  and 
beef,  but  these  sources  were  never  developed, 
and  the  artificial  attempts  to  stimulate  them  and 
the  cultivation  of  wine,  silk,  linen,  and  cotton 
came  to  naught.  There  were  scarcely  any 
schools,  and  the  people  all  lived  on  large  isolated 
tobacco  plantations  where  they  could  have  none 
of  that  association  and  conflict  of  mind  which  is 
said  to  be  essential  to  intelligence. 

The  logical  result  of  these  circumstances 
should  have  been  a  race  of  stupid,  ignorant 
boors.  But,  instead  of  that,  the  Virginians  be 
came  the  most  high-spirited,  intelligent,  and 
capable  men  on  the  continent,  the  leaders  of  the 
68 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

Revolution,  the  framers  of  the  Constitution,  and 
the  creators  of  a  large  part  of  the  political  thought 
of  the  country.  The  Americans  of  to-day  live 
largely  in  towns,  and  believe  no  other  life  pos 
sible  for  progress;  but  they  live  by  the  prin 
ciples  of  government  of  men  whom  they  worship 
as  demigods,  and  who  not  only  did  not  live  in 
towns,  but  had  scarcely  seen  a  town  until  they 
went  to  Philadelphia  to  pass  the  Declaration  of 
Independence. 

What  was  the  cause  of  the  tobacco  planter's 
success  and  how  did  he  live  ?  Is  it  that  the 
ability  to  live  in  the  country  without  stupidity  is 
one  of  the  lost  arts  ?  Have  the  vigor  and  inge 
nuity  of  mind  and  the  independence  of  character 
which  enabled  a  man  to  create  an  intellectual 
world  of  his  own  on  a  plantation  passed  away 
from  the  race  ?  Have  we  become  so  institu 
tionalized  and  specialized  and  interdependent 
that  each  individual  of  us  pines  and  perishes 
when  separated  from  the  swarm  ? 

What  means  the  enormous  list  of  subjects  in  lan 
guage,  science,  history,  and  philosophy  through 
which  the  pale  school-children  are  dragged  only 
to  meet  in  college  another  complicated  curri 
culum  which  would  have  made  the  fathers  of  the 
republic  gasp  and  stare?  Which  is  the  superior, 
the  Virginia  boy  drilled  in  the  simple  rudiments 
of  Latin,  English,  and  mathematics  by  the  fox- 
69 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

hunting  clergyman  of  the  parish,  or  the  modern 
graduate  of  stupendous  knowledge,  kept  in  life 
only  by  the  utmost  skill  of  specialists  for  his 
eyes,  teeth,  and  nerves,  and  happy  if  he  can  but 
understand  thoroughly  the  system  of  government 
and  civilization  which  the  Virginia  boy  created  ? 

The  tobacco  planter,  like  the  rice  planter  of 
Carolina,  had  undoubtedly  a  great  advantage  in 
slavery,  for  it  saved  him  from  absorbing  labor 
and  gave  him  leisure.  It  also  stimulated  his 
pride,  gave  him  the  habit  of  command  and  the 
desire  for  ascendancy,  and  these  qualities  were 
further  stimulated  by  the  aristocracy  of  which 
he  was  a  part. 

In  none  of  the  other  colonies  were  class  dis 
tinctions  so  clearly  marked  and  so  thoroughly 
believed  in.  After  the  negroes  came  the  indented 
servants  and  poor  whites,  with  a  distinct  position 
from  which  few  of  them  arose  ;  then  the  middle 
class  of  small  planters,  who  were  distinct  but 
constantly  rising  into  the  class  of  the  great  land 
lords  who  were  the  rulers  of  the  province,  the 
creators  of  opinion,  and  always  the  most  typical 
and  representative  men  of  Virginia.  There  was 
a  constant  effort  to  maintain  position  or  to  ac 
quire  it,  which  was  a  safeguard  against  mental 
stagnation. 

As  in  South  Carolina,  politics  and  the  theories 
and  principles  of  government  were  the  subject 
70 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

of  endless  conversation.  The  people  were  proud 
of  whatever  freedom  they  enjoyed,  and  in  their 
political  campaigns  and  contests  met  each  other 
freely,  and  there  was  ample  opportunity  to  ex 
change  ideas. 

In  faft,  their  lives  were  isolated  only  in  ap 
pearance.  The  plantations,  like  those  in  South 
Carolina,  were  little  kingdoms  in  themselves,  full 
of  varied  interests  and  requiring  versatility  in 
their  management.  The  climate  and  life  quickly 
gave  the  people  of  all  classes  great  social  facility 
and  an  ease  of  manner  and  intercourse  which 
still  often  astonishes  travellers  from  the  North  ; 
and  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find  a  Virginian 
who  has  been  born  with  a  natural  politeness 
and  social  instincl:  which  the  best  people  in 
other  parts  of  America  spend  half  a  lifetime  in 
acquiring. 

The  Virginians  loved  amusements  of  all  kinds, 
and  there  was  continual  visiting  between  planta 
tions.  Fox-hunting,  cock-fighting,  horse-racing, 
wrestling-matches,  and  dancing  parties,  mingled 
with  gambling  and  hard  drinking,  were  their 
delight. 

In  the  early  days  before  1700  the  cattle  and 
horses  had  been  allowed  to  wander  in  the  woods, 
and  many  of  them  became  wild.  Hunting  them 
became  a  popular  sport,  and  dogs  were  trained 
to  assist  in  it.  The  pursuit  of  the  wild  horses, 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

which  were  hunted  down  and  caught  or  shot, 
was  very  exciting,  and  it  was  a  daring  and  skil 
ful  rider  and  a  strong  horse  that  could  follow 
them  at  full  speed  among  the  trunks  and  branches 
of  the  forest. 

Up  to  the  year  1686  the  Virginia  horses  were 
very  small,  the  result  of  their  wild,  roaming 
life  and  the  scant  pasturage  in  the  woods.  But 
in  that  year  a  law  was  passed  for  improving  the 
breed,  and  before  long  those  excellent  saddle- 
horses  were  produced  which  are  still  famous. 
Men  and  women  passed  a  large  part  of  their 
time  on  horseback,  riding  over  their  large  plan 
tations  or  visiting  their  neighbors. 

The  devotion  of  all  the  people  to  sports  and 
amusements  is  now  hard  to  realize,  and  never 
since  has  there  been  anything  quite  like  it  in 
America.  It  was  merry  England  transported 
across  the  Atlantic,  and  more  merry,  light, 
and  joyous  than  England  had  ever  thought  of 
being. 

*'  To  eat  and  drink  delicately  and  freely,"  says  Campbell ; 
"  to  feast  and  dance  and  riot;  to  pamper  cocks  and  horses; 
to  observe  the  anxious,  important,  interesting  event  which 
of  two  horses  can  run  fastest  or  which  of  two  cocks  can 
flutter  and  spur  most  dexterously  5  these  are  the  grand  affairs 
that  almost  engross  the  attention  of  some  of  our  great  men, 
and  little,  low-lived  sinners  imitate  them  to  the  utmost  of 
their  power." 

72 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

In  the  town  of  Norfolk  fairs  were  constantly 
held  in  the  market-place,  which  are  described 
as  most  uproarious,  the  people  abandoning  them 
selves  to  laughter,  shouting,  and  fun  beyond 
anything  known  in  subsequent  puritanic  times. 
A  gilt-laced  hat  was  placed  on  top  of  a  pole, 
well  greased  and  soaped,  and,  as  man  after  man 
climbed  it  only  to  slip  down  with  a  rush  before 
he  reached  the  prize,  the  crowd  screamed  with 
delight  until  some  enduring  one  succeeded. 

Young  men  ran  races  with  young  women;  pigs 
were  turned  loose  and  the  whole  crowd  chased 
them  among  each  other's  legs  to  catch  them  by 
their  greased  tails.  Some  were  sewn  up  in 
sacks  and  ran  races,  tumbling  and  rolling  over 
each  other.  Others  raced  through  sugar  hogs 
heads  placed  end  to  end  with  the  ends  out,  and 
as  the  great  barrels  got  rolling  to  and  fro  the 
affair  ended,  it  is  said,  in  nothing  but  "  noise 
and  confusion." 

Then  a  man  would  appear  with  a  pot  of  hot 
mush,  and  eaters  with  distorted  faces  and  tearful 
eyes  gobbled  at  it  to  see  which  was  the  fastest. 
At  the  close  the  women  and  children  were 
hurried  away  and  a  bull-bait  began. 

The  Virginia  Gazette  of  October,  1737,  gives 
the  sports  in  Hanover  County  for  that  month  : 

"  We  have  advice  from   Hanover  County,  that  on  St. 
Andrew's   Day  there  are  to  be   Horse    Races  and  several 
73 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

other  Diversions,  for  the  entertainment  of  the  Gentlemen 
and  Ladies,  at  the  Old  Field,  near  Captain  John  Bicker- 
ton's  in  that  county  (if  permitted  by  the  Hon.  Wm. 
Byrd,  Esquire,  Proprietor  of  said  land),  the  substance  of 
which  is  as  follows,  viz  :  <  It  is  proposed  that  20  Horses 
or  Mares  do  run  round  a  three  miles'  course  for  a  prize  of 
five  pounds. 

"  *  That  a  hat  of  the  value  of  20  s.  be  cudgelled  for, 
and  that  after  the  first  challenge  made  the  Drums  are  to 
beat  every  Quarter  of  an  hour  for  three  challenges  round 
the  Ring,  and  none  to  play  with  their  Left  hand. 

"'That  a  Violin  be  played  for  by  20  Fiddlers;  no 
person  to  have  the  liberty  of  playing  unless  he  bring  a 
fiddle  with  him.  After  the  prize  is  won  they  are  all  to 
play  together,  and  each  a  different  tune,  and  to  be  treated 
by  the  Company. 

"  «  That  12  Boys  of  12  years  of  age  do  run  112  yards 
for  a  Hat  of  the  cost  of  12  shillings. 

"  '  That  a  Flag  be  flying  on  said  Day  30  feet  high. 

"  '  That  a  handsome  entertainment  be  provided  for  the 
subscribers  and  their  wives ;  and  such  of  them  as  are  not 
so  happy  as  to  have  wives  may  treat  any  other  lady. 

"  '  That  Drums,  Trumpets,  Hautboys,  &c.,  be  provided 
to  play  at  said  entertainment. 

"  '  That  after  dinner  the  Royal  Health,  His  Honor  the 
Governor's,  &c.,  are  to  be  drunk. 

"  '  That  a  Quire  of  ballads  be  sung  for  by  a  number  of 
Songsters,  all  of  them  to  have  liquor  sufficient  to  clear 
their  Wind  Pipes. 

"  '  That  a  pair  of  Silver  Buckles  be  wrestled  for  by  a 
number  of  brisk  young  men. 

"  '  That  a  pair  of  handsome  Shoes  be  danced  for. 

"'That  a  pair  of  handsome  silk  Stockings  of  one 
Pistole  value  be  given  to  the  handsomest  young  country 
74 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

maid  that  appears  in  the  Field.     With  many  other  Whim 
sical  and  Comical  Diversions  too  numerous  to  mention. 

"  '  And  as  this  mirth  is  designed  to  be  purely  innocent 
and  void  of  offence,  all  persons  resorting  there  are  desired 
to  behave  themselves  with  decency  and  sobriety ;  the  sub 
scribers  being  resolved  to  discountenance  all  immorality 
with  the  utmost  rigor.'  " 

These  sports  were  the  hearty  and  rude  ones 
which  prevailed  in  England  at  that  time  among 
the  cavaliers  and  the  members  of  the  established 
church,  and  were  the  horror  of  the  strict  Puri 
tans. 

The  passion  for  card-playing  and  gambling 
which  we  read  of  in  English  books  as  so  ex 
cessive  among  the  upper  classes  in  the  mother 
country  was  reproduced  among  the  Virginians. 
It  prevailed  in  all  the  colonies  wherever  there 
were  large  towns,  and  Chastellux  describes  the 
upper  classes  of  Boston  at  the  time  of  the  Revo 
lution  as  very  fond  of  high  play.  But  it  is  a 
mistake  to  infer,  as  some  writers  have  done,  that 
all  this  enjoyment  was  excessive  or  that  it  shows 
the  Virginians  to  have  been  a  rude  and  unedu 
cated  people  given  over  to  mere  animal  pleasures. 

After  the  Revolution  the  American  people 
passed  into  a  puritanic  state  of  mind  in  which 
the  pleasures  which  had  been  the  life  of  all  of 
the  colonies  outside  of  New  England  were  put 
under  the  ban  and  disappeared.  In  the  rapid 
75 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

development  of  the  continent  which  has  con 
tinued  throughout  nearly  the  whole  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  entire  devotion  to  business  has 
been  the  test  of  manhood.  The  sports  and 
amusements  which  were  once  followed  by  all 
ages  and  classes  have  been  uniformly  considered 
as  degrading  or  immoral,  and  not  allowable  even 
to  people  of  wealth  and  leisure  who  respefted 
the  opinion  of  the  community.  We  are  only 
just  emerging  from  this  state  of  feeling,  which 
has  inspired  many  of  the  books  which  have 
been  written  about  the  Virginians,  and  their 
reputation  has  in  consequence  suffered. 

But  much  of  what  is  written  and  has  come 
down  to  us  describes  merely  their  excesses. 
They  had  vast  leisure ;  for  the  heavy  work 
of  tobacco  culture  was  carried  on  by  slaves,  and 
close  attention  on  the  part  of  the  master  was 
required  only  during  a  few  months  of  the  year, 
and  the  master  was  not  driven  by  the  nervous 
intensity  of  modern  life.  When  everybody  had 
so  many  opportunities  and  was  so  much  devoted 
to  pleasure,  there  was  necessarily  excess,  as  there 
was  excess  at  the  same  period  in  England,  and 
the  lower  classes  in  Virginia  were  no  doubt 
very  rough  in  their  sports. 

But  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  by 
far  the  greater  part  of  these  sports  and  amuse 
ments  had  a  very  wholesome  influence,  especially 
76 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

among  the  middle  and  upper  classes.  In  our 
own  time  the  sullen  and  depressed  state  into 
which  a  large  part  of  our  farming  population 
has  fallen  is  largely  due  to  the  lack  of  amuse 
ments  and  the  ban  under  which  amusements 
have  been  placed.  In  some  parts  of  the  country 
where  fox-hunting  and  other  sports  of  colonial 
times  have  been  retained  a  superior  brightness, 
intelligence,  and  happiness  can  be  observed,  and 
where  a  farming  population  lives  near  the  water 
and  follows  the  sports  of  the  water  it  always  has 
a  distinct  advantage. 

In  our  crusade  during  the  past  century  against 
all  sports  except  billiards  and  drinking,  we  have 
forgotten  that  they  have  an  educational  value, 
that  they  develop  some  of  the  most  practical 
and  effective  of  the  faculties,  and  that  they  are 
a  safeguard  against  narrowness  and  weakness  of 
character  and  against  a  great  deal  of  positive  im 
morality. 

The  Duke  of  Wellington  was  not  the  only 
Englishman  who  learned  to  win  a  Waterloo  on 
the  cricket-fields  of  Eton.  Washington  was 
always  a  persistent  fox-hunter  ;  his  youth  was 
devoted  to  these  Virginia  sports,  and  the  results 
of  his  life  do  not  seem  to  show  that  he  was  at 
all  inferior  to  the  men  who  have  thought  such 
pleasures  degrading. 

Patrick  Henry's  youth  is  described  as  passed 
77 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

in  a  rather  excessive  indulgence  in  the  woods 
and  fields  and  trout  streams ;  and  he  is  said  to 
have  spent  too  many  evenings  at  lively  planta 
tion  houses,  where  he  played  the  fiddle  and 
danced  in  apparent  utter  disregard  of  the  mo 
mentous  questions  of  the  Revolution  which  he 
would  soon  be  called  upon  to  face. 

But  how  many  men  have  there  been  who  have 
faced  those  questions  better  than  he,  and  how 
many  could  equal  him  in  arousing  the  enlight 
ened  sentiment  of  a  continent  ?  When  the 
time  came  Henry  was  found  to  have  all  the 
knowledge  that  was  necessary,  more  wit  and 
intellectual  keenness  than  most,  and  he  became 
one  of  the  able  lawyers  of  the  country,  as  well 
as  an  important  public  man.  The  joyous  even 
ings  of  the  fiddle  and  the  vigor  of  the  pine  forests 
and  the  mountains  appear  to  have  interfered  as 
little  with  the  development  of  a  great  career  as 
the  schooling  received  by  Jefferson,  Marshall, 
and  Madison  at  the  hands  of  those  much-belied 
parish  clergymen. 

The  colonial  Virginians  are  generally  charged 
with  being  inveterate  gamblers,  but  the  Marquis 
de  Chastellux  describes  two  days  which  he  spent 
at  Offly,  General  Nelson's  plantation,  during 
which,  although  there  were  fifteen  or  twenty 
people  in  the  house,  kept  in-doors  by  bad  weather, 
cards  and  play  were  not  even  mentioned.  He 
78 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

comments  on  the  circumstance  because,  as  he 
says,  in  France,  under  the  same  conditions,  there 
would  have  been  no  end  of  trictrac,  whist,  and 
lotto. 

Music,  drawing,  and  public  reading,  he  adds, 
were  not  sufficiently  cultivated  by  the  Virginia 
women,  but  on  this  occasion  a  Miss  Taliaferro 
(Tolliver  he  spells  it,  which  was  the  way  it  was 
pronounced)  sang  some  songs.  "  A  charming 
voice,  and  the  artless  simplicity  of  her  singing 
were  a  substitute  for  taste  if  not  taste  itself." 

The  Virginia  women  might,  he  thought,  be 
come  musicians  if  the  fox-hounds  would  only 
stop  baying  for  a  little  while  each  day.  There 
were  also,  he  says,  sources  of  amusement  in 
the  house  "  in  sdme  good  French  and  English 
authors,"  and  in  subsequent  journeys  he  met  with 
several  Virginia  ladies  who  sang  and  played  on 
the  harpsichord. 

Chastellux  was  very  fond  of  music,  and  proud 
of  the  efficiency  in  it  which  his  old  regiment  in 
France  had  possessed.  He  was  a  general  in  the 
French  army  who  came  over  with  our  allies  at 
the  time  of  the  Revolution,  and  being  a  distin 
guished  and  polished  man  of  the  world,  familiar 
with  the  best  society  in  France,  the  pleasure  he 
found  among  the  upper  classes  in  Virginia  is 
sure  proof  that  they  were  not  as  rude  as  some 
have  supposed. 

79  • 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

There  were  many  foreigners  who  wrote  their 
impressions  of  the  colonies, — Abbe  Robin,  Bris- 
sot,  Burnaby,  Crevecceur,  Smyth,  Kalm,  Roche 
foucauld,  Blanchard,  and  Dankers ;  but  none  of 
them  were  quite  equal  to  Chastellux  in  ability 
and  keenness  of  observation. 

He  describes  one  of  the  Nelsons  who  had 
been  secretary  of  the  province  before  the  Revo 
lution  as  an  "  old  magistrate  whose  white  locks, 
noble  figure,  and  stature,  which  was  above  the 
common  size,  commanded  respecl  and  venera 
tion  ;"  and,  like  all  true  Virginians,  he  was  badjy 
afflicted  with  the  gout.  On  the  plantation 
where  he  lived  he  could  within  less  than  six 
hours  assemble  thirty  of  his  children  and 
grandchildren,  besides  nephews  and  nieces  in 
the  neighborhood,  amounting  in  all  to  seventy. 
These  enormous  families  which  were  to  be 
found  in  colonial  times  in  Virginia  and  New 
England,  where  the  people  were  very  homoge 
neous  and  united,  always  astonished  the  French 
men. 

It  may  be  added  that  Chastellux  found  the 
word  "  honey,"  now  so  common  in  the  South 
and  indeed  in  all  the  United  States,  used  in 
Virginia  as  a  term  of  endearment ;  and  he  ex 
plains  that  it  is  equivalent  to  the  French  man 
petit  coeur. 

Washington   may  be   taken  as  a  fair   type  of 
80 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

the  usual  result  of  Virginia  life  among  the 
upper  classes  when  it  did  not  run  to  excesses. 
He  was  very  fond  of  card-playing.  We  find 
the  entry  in  his  journal,  "  At  home  all  day  over 
cards ;"  and  his  account-books  show  innumer 
able  purchases  of  cards,  usually  a  dozen  packs  at 
a  time. 

He  played  for  money  and  small  stakes,  espe 
cially  when  he  was  young,  and  his  winnings  and 
losings  are  recorded  in  the  books  he  kept  with 
out  the  slightest  consciousness  that  there  was 
anything  that  might  be  criticised  ;  and  there  was 
not,  for  he  was  merely  following  the  universal 
custom  of  the  time  in  which  he  lived.  With 
his  usual  moderation  of  character,  he  did  not 
play  for  large  sums.  Three  pounds  is  the  largest 
gain  and  nine  pounds  the  largest  loss  we  find 
recorded  by  him.  In  the  same  way  he  played 
billiards,  betting  on  the  games,  and  in  the  midst 
of  these  records  we  also  find  that  he  was  reading 
Addison's  Spectator. 

His  greatest  passion,  as  we  all  know,  was  for 
horses.  He  bred  them  carefully  at  Mount  Ver- 
non,  ran  them  in  races,  and  won  and  lost  bets 
on  them.  As  for  fox-hunting,  he  followed  it 
persistently  and  devotedly  in  his  youth  and  re 
turned  to  it  again  with  as  great  relish  as  ever 
when  he  retired  from  public  life  and  was  settled 
at  Mount  Vernon.  In  fadl:,  he  kept  it  up  until 

VOL.  I.— 6  8 1 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

a  fall  from  his  horse  wrenched  his  back  and  he 
could  hunt  no  more.  The  descriptions  in  his 
diary  of  the  details  of  hunting  are  those  of  an 
enthusiast.  His  hounds  were  carefully  trained, 
sometimes  running  so  well  together  that  the 
pack  could  be  "  covered  by  a  blanket,"  and  he 
had  pet  names  for  them  like  Mopsey,  Trueman, 
Music,  Bell  Tongue,  and  Sweetlips. 

The  stupid,  wooden,  sanctimonious  character 
into  which  he  has  been  manufactured  to  suit 
modern  hypocrisy  is  not  in  accordance  either 
with  his  own  account  of  himself  or  with  state 
ments  of  his  contemporaries.  Instead  of  being 
reserved  and  frigid,  he  was  an  extremely  so 
ciable  man,  and  he  could  not  have  lived  in  Vir 
ginia  and  been  otherwise.  He  belonged  to  the 
clubs  which  in  his  day  met  at  all  the  taverns 
and  cross-roads.  He  spent  days  and  nights,  like 
Patrick  Henry,  as  a  visitor  at  plantations.  When 
he  came  into  possession  of  Mount  Vernon,  al 
though  he  was  a  bachelor,  he  describes  himself 
as  "having  much  company,"  which  meant  that 
within  two  months  he  had  had  people  to  dinner 
or  to  spend  the  night  on  twenty-nine  days  and 
had  gone  away  to  dine  or  visit  on  seven. 

His  passion  for  dancing  was  almost  as  strong 

as  his  passion  for  horses.     He  complained  when 

in  the  woods  or  on  the  frontier  that  there  were 

no  balls  or  assemblies  to  while  away  the  time  ; 

82 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

and  he  would  often  ride  ten  miles  from  Mount 
Vernon  to  a  dance. 

During  the  Revolution,  although  he  was  the 
commander-in  chief,  he  never  thought  it  beneath 
his  dignity  to  dance  at  every  opportunity,  and  he 
encouraged  balls  and  dancing  assemblies  among 
the  officers.  On  one  of  these  occasions  we  find 
it  recorded  that  "  His  Excellency  and  Mrs. 
Greene  danced  upwards  of  three  hours  without 
once  sitting  down."  When  we  add  to  this  his 
superb  physical  strength,  which  instantly  im 
pressed  every  one  who  saw  him,  and  that  he 
habitually  drank  from  half  a  pint  to  a  pint  of 
Madeira,  besides  punch  and  beer,  we  have  a 
pifture  of  the  sort  of  man  the  Virginia  colonial 
life  produced  when  at  its  best. 

Such  being  the  broadening  effeft  of  his  pleas 
ures,  what  were  the  serious  occupations  of  a 
great  planter  ?  Each  one  of  them  ruled  over  a 
little  world  of  his  own,  consisting  of  from  one 
hundred  to  four  or  five  hundred  people.  At 
Mount  Vernon  there  were  about  three  hundred, 
constituting  a  self-supporting  community,  and 
Washington  gave  orders  to  "  buy  nothing  you 
can  make  within  yourselves." 

There  were  a  blacksmith  shop,  wood-burners 
to  keep  the  house  supplied  with  charcoal,  brick- 
makers,  masons,  carpenters,  a  mill  which  ground 
flour  for  sale  as  well  as  for  the  family's  use, 
S3 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

coopers  to  make  barrels  for  it,  and  a  schooner  to 
carry  all  produce  to  market.  Besides  these  there 
were  a  shoemaker,  and  weavers  who  in  the  year 
1768  produced  eight  hundred  and  fifteen  yards 
of  linen,  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  yards  of 
woollen,  one  hundred  and  forty  yards  of  linsey, 
and  forty  yards  of  cotton  goods.  There  was  an 
important  fishery  on  the  shore,  and  large  herds 
of  cattle,  horses,  and  sheep,  not  to  mention  the 
great  waving  fields  of  grain,  for  Washington 
planted  little  or  no  tobacco. 

It  was  a  large  enterprise,  somewhat  resem 
bling  in  the  ability  required  our  modern  manu 
facturing  industries,  but  more  varied.  In  facl, 
in  colonial  times  the  Southern  plantations  were 
the  great  business  undertakings  of  the  country, 
and  more  broadening  in  their  effecT:  on  character 
than  the  petty  trades  and  small  farming  that 
were  followed  in  the  North. 

The  man  who  successfully  ruled  this  property 
and  its  retainers  and  at  the  same  time  led  the 
life  of  a  sportsman  and  a  gentleman,  mingled 
with  military  service  on  the  frontiers  in  the 
French  and  Indian  wars,  was  receiving  an  educa 
tion  which  cannot  be  given  in  modern  times  by 
any  university,  city,  or  community  in  the  United 
States.  No  amount  of  book-learning,  no  college 
curriculum  imitated  from  plodding,  mystical 
Germans,  no  cramming  or  examinations,  and 
84 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

no  system  of  gymnastic  exercises  can  be  even  a 
substitute  for  that  Virginia  life  which  inspired 
with  vigor,  freshness,  and  creative  power  the 
great  men  who  formed  the  Union  and  the  Con 
stitution. 

There  is  no  mystery  about  it.  There  is  no 
need  that  we  should  wonder  that  such  men 
should  come  from  a  place  we  know  is  now  in 
capable  of  producing  them.  As  soon  as  we 
unravel  the  details  of  colonial  life  it  is  all  plain 
enough.  It  was  that  same  mingling  of  sport, 
scholarship,  social  intercourse,  and  knowledge 
of  the  world  in  country  life  which  has  made 
England  the  leader  among  nations  ;  and  the  Vir 
ginians  had  the  advantage  of  a  new  country, 
easily  acquired  wealth,  the  freshness  of  the  wil 
derness,  and  a  climate  which  sharpened  the 
intelleft. 

The  test  of  genius  and  force  of  character  is 
the  effortlessness  with  which  it  performs  its 
tasks.  Washington  went  to  the  front  by  a  nat 
ural  ascendency,  a  subtle  magnetism  of  character. 
Those  who  knew  him  could  not  pass  him  by  or 
disregard  him  even  when  they  tried.  There  is 
no  evidence  of  the  schemes  and  plans,  the  self- 
advertising,  the  intrigues  and  bitter  heart-burn 
ings  by  which  the  second-rate  crawl  to  power. 
The  brow  of  the  greatest  American  was,  it  is 
said,  often  thoughtful,  but  never  disquieted. 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

The  critics  analyze  him.  He  was  not  this, 
they  say  ;  he  had  not  read  that ;  it  would  have 
been  done  better  in  this  way  ;  and  conclude  by 
informing  us  that  it  was  impossible  he  could 
have  been  what  he  was.  But  he  did  it.  He 
was  always  there.  Nothing  could  stop  him, 
and  he  would  not  go  away. 

As  we  read  the  life  of  Jefferson  we  meet  with 
a  similar  difficulty.  His  recorded  words  and 
what  is  said  of  him  seem  inadequate  to  account 
for  the  stupendous  influence  he  exercised,  the 
political  party  he  created,  the  ideas  he  estab 
lished,  and  the  worship  which  follows  him  to 
this  day.  But  it  was  the  personality,  the  native 
force  which  he  exercised  unconsciously,  which 
while  he  lived  subdued  the  minds  of  men,  and, 
now  that  it  is  dead  with  him,  there  is  nothing 
to  explain  the  result. 

Marshall,  one  of  the  most  noble  and  charming 
of  all  the  Virginians,  trained  in  the  typical  Vir 
ginia  manner  by  a  parish  clergyman  and  out-door 
athletic  sports  in  which  his  long  limbs  were 
very  proficient,  has,  however,  left  behind  him  a 
great  deal  to  explain  the  power  of  his  life.  The 
thirty  volumes  of  the  Reports  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States,  which  contain  his 
decisions  as  Chief-Justice,  are  the  foundations  of 
American  constitutional  law.  He  handled  the 
most  difficult  and  momentous  judicial  questions 
86 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

with  giant  ease,  and  no  one  has  ever  attempted 
to  deny  his  wonderful  intellectual  power  or  its 
vast  influence  on  the  destinies  of  the  American 
Union. 

Like  Washington  and  Jefferson,  he  was  a  thor 
oughly  natural  and  native  product  of  Virginia 
life ;  and  when  we  reflect  on  what  that  life  was 
we  are  led  irresistibly  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
highest  forms  of  intellect  are  beyond  the  power 
of  mere  books  and  colleges  to  produce.  They 
originate  in  physical  vigor  and  are  developed  by 
association. 

As  long  as  the  old  colonial  life  lingered,  Vir 
ginia  continued  to  produce  such  men  ;  not  all  so 
great  as  Marshall  and  Washington  and  Jefferson, 
but  all  with  some  measure  of  that  instantly 
recognized  leadership  which  carried  them  up 
without  an  effort.  They  wandered  off  into 
Kentucky  and  other  States,  and  were  as  irre 
pressible  there  as  in  the  Old  Dominion.  They 
filled  Congress  and  all  the  offices  of  government, 
and  far  down  into  the  present  century  it  was  the 
continual  complaint  that  it  was  impossible  to 
keep  out  the  Virginians. 

A  great  deal  that  has  been  written  about  Vir 
ginia  is  by  Northern  writers  inspired  by  the 
anti-slavery  movement,  which  compelled  them 
to  see  even  in  the  colonial  Virginian  an  ignorant, 
licentious,  cruel  brute.  But  Governor  Spots- 
87 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

wood,  after  ruling  the  colony  for  twelve  years, 
was  so  pleased  with  it  that  he  lived  there  the 
rest  of  his  life ;  and  he  tells  us  that  there  was 
"  less  swearing,  less  profanity,  less  drunkenness 
and  debauchery,  less  uncharitable  feuds  and  ani 
mosities,  and  less  knavery  and  villany  than  in 
any  other  part  of  the  world." 

The  more  we  study  the  life  in  colonial  days 
on  the  James  and- the  Potomac  the  brighter  and 
better  it  appears.  Travellers  from  England  and 
France  like  Smyth  or  Rochefoucauld  were  in 
variably  delighted  with  it.  "A  taste  for  read 
ing,"  says  Rochefoucauld,  "  is  more  prevalent 
among  gentlemen  of  the  first  class  than  in  any 
other  part  of  America  ;"  *  and  Smyth's  testi 
mony  is  to  the  same  effect : 

"  The  gentlemen  are  more  respe&able  and  numerous 
than  in  any  other  province  in  America.  These  in  general 
have  had  a  liberal  education,  possess  enlightened  under 
standing  and  thorough  knowledge  of  the  world  that  fur 
nishes  them  with  an  ease  and  freedom  of  manners  and 
conversation  highly  to  their  advantage  .  .  .  they  being 
actually,  according  to  my  ideas,  the  most  agreeable  and 
best  companions,  friends,  and  neighbors  that  need  be  de 
sired."  (Smyth's  lt  Travels  in  America,"  vol.  i.  p.  65.) 

Although  there  were  no  towns,  the  Virginia 
rivers  during  the  tobacco  season  were  full  of 


*  Vol.  ii.  p.  117. 

88 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

ships  coming  and  going  to  each  plantation 
and  leaving  the  luxuries  of  English  manufacture 
which  the  wealth  of  the  planters  enabled  them 
to  buy.  The  investigations  into  the  contents  of 
old  Virginia  houses  show  that  they  were  crammed 
from  cellar  to  garret  with  all  the  articles  of 
pleasure  and  convenience  that  were  produced  in 
England  :  Russia  leather  chairs,  Turkey  worked 
chairs,  enormous  quantities  of  damask  napkins 
and  table  linen,  silver-  and  pewter-ware,  candle 
sticks  of  brass,  silver,  and  pewter,  flagons,  dram 
cups,  beakers,  tankards,  chafing  dishes,  Spanish 
tables,  Dutch  tables,  valuable  clocks,  screens, 
and  escritoires. 

Chastellux  describes  the  Nelson  house  at  York- 
town  as  very  handsome,  "  from  which  neither 
European  taste  nor  luxury  were  excluded ;  a 
chimney-piece  and  some  bas-reliefs  of  very  fine 
marble  exquisitely  sculptured  were  particularly 
admired." 

He  also  tells  us  that  "  the  chief  magnificence 
of  the  Virginians  consists  in  furniture,  linen, 
and  plate."  This  we  shall  find  to  be  character 
istic  of  all  the  colonies,  especially  with  regard 
to  linen  and  silver-ware,  of  which  the  people 
had  what  often  seem  to  be  unnecessarily  large 
quantities.  The  reason  for  the  quantities  of 
silver-ware  may  have  been  that,  in  the  absence 
of  savings  banks  and  investment  securities,  the 
89 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

people  used  their  savings  to  buy  silver,  which 
they  believed  would  always  have  a  permanent 
value  ;  so  that  in  the  Northern  colonies  it  was 
not  uncommon  to  find  ordinary  farmers'  families 
with  what  seems  a  large  supply  of  it. 

The  people  dressed  extravagantly  in  the  bright 
colors  that  were  fashionable  in  Europe,  and  their 
garments  are  sometimes  described  as  a  little 
ludicrous  in  contrast  with  the  wilderness  around 
them  and  the  slovenliness  of  the  slaves.  Silk 
stockings,  beaver  hats,  red  slippers,  green  scarfs, 
gold  lace,  and  scarlet  cloaks  among  the  men  and 
silk  and  flowered  gowns,  crimson  taffetas,  and 
pearl  necklaces  among  the  women  became  such  a 
common  indulgence  that  the  legislature  tried  to 
suppress  them. 

These  extravagant  costumes  were  usually  given 
full  display  at  church  on  Sunday,  which  was  a 
weekly  meeting  for  the  people  of  all  the  neigh 
boring  plantations.  Those  old  brick  churches 
must  have  looked  very  glorious  within  when  the 
people  were  all  seated  according  to  social  rank 
in  their  high-backed  pews  and  their  wonderful 
clothes  ;  and  when  the  congregation  poured  out 
after  service,  the  yellow  and  scarlet,  the  silk  and 
satin,  must  have  been  a  curious  contrast  against 
the  dark  green  of  the  pine  forest  and  the  rough 
surroundings. 

Although  leading  a  country  life,  the  women 
90 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

seem  to  have  been  able  to  go  about  a  great  deal 
to  dancing  parties  and  amusements.  They  rode 
on  horseback,  and  long  distances  never  deterred 
them.  We  read  of  no  whining  complaints  of  the 
impossibility  of  enjoying  life  in  the  country 
which  are  now  so  common.  Without  professing 
to  be  advanced  or  strong-minded,  the  colonial 
women  of  Virginia  seem  to  have  been  able  to 
create  pleasure  out  of  almost  any  sort  of  sur 
roundings,  and  in  their  homes  young  girls  were 
full  of  gayety  and  mischief.  We  may  smile  at 
their  simplicity;  but  it  was  the  simplicity  of 
health  and  vigor. 

"  We  took  it  into  our  heads  to  want  to  eat.  Well,  we 
had  a  large  dish  of  bacon  and  beef,  after  that  a  bowl  of 
sago  cream,  and  after  that  an  apple  pye  in  bed.  After  this 
we  took  it  into  our  heads  to  eat  oysters.  We  got  up,  put 
on  our  rappers,  and  went  down  in  the  seller  to  get  them. 
Do  you  think  Mr.  Washington  did  not  follow  us  and  scare 
us  just  to  death  !  We  went  up  tho'  and  ate  our  oysters." 
(Goodwin's  "  Dolly  Madison,"  p. 8.) 

Burnaby  says  that  the  women  were  seldom 
accomplished  and  could  not  be  relied  upon  for 
very  interesting  conversation.  Burnaby  was  a 
learned  doctor  of  divinity  and  set  a  rather  high 
standard,  to  which  comparatively  few  even  now 
could  conform  in  any  part  of  the  country.  They 
were  immoderately  fond  of  dancing,  but  not 
graceful  in  it.  When  tired  out  with  ordinary 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

dances,  they  resorted  to  jigs  which  they  had 
learned,  he  says,  from  the  negroes.  A  man  and 
a  woman  danced  about  the  room,  one  retiring, 
the  other  pursuing  in  a  fantastical  manner  until 
another  woman  got  up,  when  the  first  must  sit 
down,  being  cut  out,  as  they  called  it ;  and  the 
men  cut  out  one  another  in  the  same  way. 

The  fondness  for  extravagant  dress  among  the 
women,  of  which  we  find  so  many  instances  in 
colonial  times,  was  as  prevalent  in  the  woods  of 
Virginia  as  elsewhere.  Chastellux  describes  two 
young  ladies  arriving  at  a  house  "  in  huge  gauze 
bonnets,  covered  with  ribbands,  and  dressed  in 
such  a  manner  as  formed  a  perfect  contrast  to  the 
simplicity  of  the  house  in  which  they  were ;" 
and  his  translator,  an  Englishman,  George  Grieve, 
who  had  also  travelled  in  Virginia,  gives  his  own 
experiences  in  a  foot-note  : 

"  The  rage  for  dress  amongst  the  women  in  America,  in 
the  very  height  of  the  miseries  of  the  war,  was  beyond  all 
bounds  j  nor  was  it  confined  to  the  great  towns,  it  pre 
vailed  equally  on  the  sea  coasts,  and  in  the  woods  and  soli 
tudes  of  the  vast  extent  of  country  from  Florida  to  New 
Hampshire.  In  travelling  into  the  interior  parts  of  Vir 
ginia  I  spent  a  delicious  day  at  an  inn,  at  the  ferry  of 
Shenandoah,  or  the  Catacton  Mountains,  with  the  most 
engaging,  accomplished  and  voluptuous  girls,  the  daugh 
ters  of  the  landlord,  a  native  of  Boston  transplanted 
thither  5  who  with  all  the  gifts  of  nature  possessed  the  arts 
of  dress  not  unworthy  of  Parisian  milliners,  and  went 
92 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

regularly  three  times  a  week  to  the  distance  of  seven  miles, 
to  attend  the  lessons  of  one  De  Grace,  a  French  dancing 
master,  who  was  making  a  fortune  in  the  country." 
(Chastellux,  Travels,  vol.  ii.  p.  115.) 

British  men-of-war  were  constantly  in  the 
rivers.  The  easy  access  from  the  sea  and  the 
hospitality  of  the  planters  doubtless  made  the 
province  seem  a  very  convenient  anchorage. 
The  recollections  of  a  lady  who  lived  near 
Norfolk  show  some  of  the  phases  of  this  part 
of  their  life : 

"  My  father  was  very  hospitable  and  used  to  entertain 
all  the  strangers  of  any  note  that  came  among  us,  and 
especially  the  captains  and  officers  of  the  British  Navy 
that  used  to  visit  our  waters  before  the  war.  Among 
these  I  remember  particularly  Capt.  Gill,  a  fine  old  man, 
afterwards  Admiral  Gill.  He  commanded  at  this  time  a 
fifty  gun  ship  called  the  Lanneston  ...  He  had  thirty- 
two  midshipmen  on  board,  mostly  boys  and  lads  of  good 
families  and  several  of  them  sprigs  of  nobility.  These  used 
to  come  to  my  father's  house  at  all  hours  and  frequently 
dined  with  us.  Sometimes,  too,  they  would  go  into  the 
kitchen  to  get  a  little  something  to  stay  their  appetites, 
when  old  Quashabee  would  assert  her  authority,  and 
threaten  to  pin  a  dish — something  to  their  young  lord 
ships  if  they  did  not  get  out  of  the  way.  I  remember 
particularly  a  young  stripling  by  the  name  of  Lord  George 
Gordon,  afterwards  so  famous  as  the  leader  of  the  riots  in 
London,  whom  I  have  seen  begging  old  Quashabee  for  a 
piece  of  the  skin  which  she  had  just  taken  off  the  ham 
which  she  was  about  to  send  into  the  house  for  dinner, 
93 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

and  eating  it  with  great  relish.  Of  course  I  had  many 
beaux  who  flattered  me  and  danced  with  me,  and  one  or 
two  who  loved  me,  and  would  have  married  me  if  I  would 
have  said  yes.  Among  these  was  a  young  Mr.  Smith,  a 
lieutenant  in  the  British  Navy  with  a  fine  florid  face  and 
auburn  hair,  who  came  here  in  a  merchant  vessel  on  his 
way  to  join  his  ship  in  the  West  Indies,  who  would  have 
given  his  eyes  for  me  if  I  would  have  taken  them." 
("Lower  Norfolk  County  Antiquary,"  No.  2,  part  i.  p. 
26.) 

Family  life  and  family  ties  were  strongly  de 
veloped  in  Virginia.  Every  one  wanted  to  found 
a  family  or  extend  and  perpetuate  the  influence 
of  the  one  he  already  had,  and  relationship  was 
claimed  to  a  degree  which  has  made  the  term 
Virginia  cousin  a  recognized  method  of  ex 
pressing  remote  kinship. 

There  was,  of  course,  the  same  profusion  and 
hospitality  which  was  to  be  found  on  the  Caro 
lina  plantations :  plenty  of  good  horses,  plenty 
of  servants  and  slaves,  and  plenty  to  eat  and 
drink,  combined  with  a  considerable  disregard 
of  appearances.  The  negroes  were  not  neat  and 
could  not  be  made  so.  Elkanah  Watson,  a  New 
Englander  who  travelled  in  Virginia  at  the  time 
of  the  Revolution,  was  very  much  shocked  at 
the  nudity  of  the  young  negroes.  Naked  negro 
children  sometimes  waited  at  table,  a  custom 
which  is  said  to  have  also  prevailed  in  the  West 
Indies.  Attempts  to  have  them  well  dressed 
94 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

almost  invariably  failed,  and  those  who  wore 
livery  were  apt  to  make  themselves  ludicrous 
in  it. 

The  French  travellers  Brissot  and  Rochefou 
cauld  complain  that  amidst  the  troops  of  slaves 
and  beautiful  horses  and  the  masses  of  silver 
plate  on  the  sideboards  there  was  a  touch  of  the 
barbaric.  Silk  stockings  were  worn  with  boots, 
window-panes  were  broken,  and  the  coach-horses 
were  not  carefully  matched.  But  the  stables 
were  kept  in  good  condition. 

On  the  frontiers  the  smallness  of  the  cabins, 
which  were  usually  only  one  room,  where  the 
whole  family  lived,  ate,  and  slept,  led  to  curious 
habits,  of  which  we  shall  have  more  to  say  in 
describing  bundling  in  Massachusetts  and  Con 
necticut. 

"  Being  fatigued  he  presently  desired  them  to  show  him 
where  he  was  to  sleep  j  accordingly  they  pointed  to  a  bed 
in  a  corner  of  the  room  where  they  were  sitting.  The 
gentleman  was  a  little  embarrassed  ;  but  being  excessively 
weary  he  retired,  half  undressed  himself,  and  got  into  bed. 
After  some  time  the  old  gentlewoman  came  to  bed  to  him, 
after  her  the  old  gentleman  and  last  of  all  the  young  lady. 
This,  in  a  country  excluded  from  all  civilized  society,  could 
only  proceed  from  simplicity  and  innocence  :  and  indeed  it 
is  a  general  and  true  observation  that  forms  and  observances 
become  necessary  and  are  attended  to  in  proportion  as  man 
ners  become  corrupt,  and  it  is  found  expedient  to  guard 
against  vice."  (Burnaby,  Travels,  in.) 
95 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

Rude  plenty  combined  at  times  with  great 
toleration  for  heavy  drinking  was  the  life  the 
people  loved,  and  Thackeray  has  given  a  fair  de 
scription  of  it  in  "  The  Virginians."  A  planter 
was  never  so  happy  as  when  his  house  was  full 
of  his  neighbors  and  his  stable  full  of  their 
horses.  An  invitation  to  a  neighboring  family 
to  come  to  dinner  usually  meant  to  come  and 
spend  the  day.  Men  and  women  arrived  in  the 
morning  on  horseback,  lounged  about,  strolled 
or  slept  at  noon  on  the  couches  in  the  hall-way, 
carrying  on  with  each  other  continual  raillery 
and  fun  mingled  with  the  ever-present  politics, 
and  feasting  far  into  the  night. 

Kennedy's  "  Swallow  Barn,"  a  book  which 
had  considerable  reputation  some  years  before 
the  civil  war,  gives  a  pifture  of  Virginia  life 
about  fifty  years  after  the  Revolution,  when 
some  of  the  colonial  ways  still  survived.  Al 
though  impaired  by  many  faults  of  style,  it  is 
worth  reading  for  the  conditions  which  it  de 
scribes. 

One  of  Kennedy's  best  characters  is  the  law 
yer  who  was  also  fox-hunter  and  farmer,  whose 
hounds  often  insisted  on  following  him  on  the 
circuit  of  the  county  courts,  and  who  never 
could  be  restrained  from  joining  a  hunt  which 
came  in  his  way. 

Less  violent  and  aggressive  than  the  South 
96 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

Carolinians,  the  Virginians  were  nevertheless, 
like  the  Carolinians,  ready  to  stand  alone  before 
the  world,  and  always  thought  of  themselves  as 
an  independent  nation.  The  cloudless  skies 
and  genial  air  had  changed  the  heavy,  sombre 
Englishmen  into  the  spirited,  keen,  vivacious 
beings  who  produced  the  Jeffersons,  Madisons, 
Randolphs,  and  Lees. 

They  were  united  and  homogeneous,  and, 
like  the  people  of  Massachusetts,  firm  believers 
in  themselves,  and  this  was  one  of  the  causes  of 
their  greatness.  They  admired  everything  of 
their  own  and  exaggerated  the  merits  of  their 
prominent  men.  The  man  who  had  become 
the  wonder  of  his  county  or  parish  they  took 
for  granted  must  be  known  to  the  whole  con 
tinent. 

The  lower  classes  and  poor  whites  were  very 
rough  and  disorderly  in  colonial  times,  and 
spent  a  large  part  of  their  time  drinking,  gam 
bling,  and  fighting  at  taverns  and  at  elections. 
They  were  unfortunately  very  numerous  com 
pared  with  the  aristocratic  planter  class,  and 
when  that  class  lost  its  power  and  control  in 
the  Revolution,  these  lower  orders  became  the 
ruin  of  all  that  was  great  and  distinguished  in 
Virginia. 

It  was  these  lower-class  people  who  indulged 
in  the  practice  of  "  gouging."  If  they  could 
VOL.  i.-7  97 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

get  their  adversary  down,  they  seized  a  side-lock 
of  his  hair,  and  pressing  their  thumb  against 
the  eyeball,  forced  it  from  the  socket  unless  he 
called  out  "  king's  cruse  !"  They  were  always 
anxious  to  swap  horses  or  watches  with  a 
stranger,  and  if  he  declined  might  threaten 
"  to  try  the  strength  of  his  eyestrings." 

Elkanah  Watson  had  on  several  occasions  in 
his  travels  sharp  experience  with  some  of  this 
class  : 

"  In  passing  Hanover  Court  House,  Virginia,  we  found 
the  whole  county  assembled  at  election.  The  moment  I 
alighted,  a  wretched  pug-nosed  fellow  assailed  me  to  swap 
watches.  I  had  hardly  shaken  him  off,  when  I  was  at 
tacked  by  a  wild  Irishman,  who  insisted  on  my  swapping 
horses  with  him,  and  in  a  twinkling  ran  up  the  pedigree 
of  his  horse  to  the  grand  dam.  Treating  his  importunity 
with  little  respect,  I  became  near  being  involved  in  a  boxing 
match,  the  Irishman  swearing  that  I  did  not  '  trate  him 
like  a  jintleman.'  I  had  hardly  escaped  this  dilemma 
when  my  attention  was  attracted  by  a  fight  between  two 
very  unwieldy  fat  men,  foaming  and  puffing  like  to  furies, 
until  one,  succeeding  in  twisting  a  forefinger  in  a  side-lock 
of  the  other's  hair,  and  in  the  act  of  thrusting  by  this 
purchase  his  thumb  into  the  latter's  eye,  he  bawled  out 
'king's  cruse!'  equivalent  in  technical  language  to 
'  enough.'  "  (Watson's  "  Men  and  Times  of  the  Revo 
lution,"  p.  60.) 

The  translator  of  Chastellux's  Travels  also 
had  an  experience  : 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

"  The  indolence  and  dissipation  of  the  middling  and 
lower  classes  of  white  inhabitants  of  Virginia  are  such  as 
to  give  pain  to  every  reflecting  mind.  Horse  racing,  cock 
fighting  and  boxing  matches  are  standing  amusements,  for 
which  they  neglect  all  business,  and  in  the  latter  of  which 
they  conduct  themselves  with  a  barbarity  worthy  of  their 
savage  neighbors.  The  ferocious  practice  of  stage  boxing 
in  England  is  urbanity  compared  with  the  Virginian  mode 
of  fighting  :  In  their  combats,  unless  specially  precluded, 

they  are  admitted  (to  use  their  own  term)  'to  bite, , 

and  gouge,'  which  operations,  when  the  first  onset  with 
fists  is  over,  consists  in  fastening  on  the  nose  or  ears  of 
their  adversaries  with  their  teeth,  .  .  .  and  dexterously 
scooping  out  an  eye;  on  which  account  it  is  no  uncommon 
circumstance  to  meet  men  in  the  prime  of  youth  deprived 
of  one  of  those  organs. 

"  This  is  no  traveller's  exaggeration;  I  speak  from  knowl 
edge  and  observation.  In  the  summer  months  it  is  very 
common  to  make  a  party  on  horseback  to  a  limestone 
spring,  near  which  there  is  usually  some  little  hut  with 
spirituous  liquors,  if  the  party  are  not  themselves  provided, 
where  their  debauch  frequently  terminates  in  a  boxing 
match,  a  horse  race,  or  perhaps  both.  During  a  day's 
residence  at  Leesburg  I  was  myself  accidentally  drawn  into 
one  of  these  parties,  where  I  soon  experienced  the  strength 
of  the  liquor,  which  was  concealed  by  the  refreshing  cool 
ness  of  the  water.  While  we  were  seated  round  the 
spring,  at  the  edge  of  a  delightful  wood,  four  or  five 
countrymen  arrived,  headed  by  a  veteran  cyclops,the  terror 
of  the  neighborhood,  ready  on  every  occasion  to  risk  his 
remaining  eye.  We  soon  found  ourselves  under  the 
necessity  of  relinquishing  our  posts  and  making  our  escape 
from  these  fellows,  who  evidently  sought  to  provoke  a 
quarrel. 

99 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

"  On  our  return  home,  whilst  I  was  rejoicing  at  our  good 
fortune  and  admiring  the  moderation  of  my  company,  we 
arrived  at  a  plain  spot  of  ground  by  a  wood  side,  on  which 
my  horse  no  sooner  set  foot  than,  taking  the  bit  between 
his  teeth,  off  he  went  at  full  speed,  attended  by  the  hoops 
and  hallooingsfof  my  companions.  An  Englishman  is  not 
easily  thrown  off  his  guard  on  horseback  ;  but  at  the  end 
of  half  a  mile  my  horse  stopped  short,  as  if  he  had  been 
shot,  and  threw  me  with  considerable  violence  over  his 
head  ;  my  buckle,  for  I  was  without  boots,  entangled  me 
in  the  stirrup,  but  fortunately  broke  into  twenty  pieces. 
The  company  rode  up,  delighted  with  the  adventure  $  and 
it  was  then,  for  the  first  time,  I  discovered  that  I  had  been 
purposely  induced,  by  one  of  my  own  friends,  to  change 
horses  with  him  for  the  afternoon  5  that  his  horse  had 
been  accustomed  to  similar  exploits  on  the  same  race 
ground;  that  the  whole  of  the  business  was  neither  more 
nor  less  than  a  Virginian  piece  of  pleasantry."  (Chastellux, 
Travels,  vol.  ii.  p.  192.) 

As  against  this  description  of  the  translator 
we  have  Chastellux's  account  of  a  cock-fight 
he  saw  at  one  of  the  inns.  The  planters  had 
collected  from  a  distance  of  thirty  or  forty  miles, 
bringing  their  cocks,  money  for  betting,  and 
also  their  own  provisions,  because  the  inn,  or 
ordinary,  as  it  was  usually  called  at  that  time 
in  Virginia,  was  small.  So  many  arrived  that 
they  were  obliged  to  sleep  in  blankets  on  the 
floor.  But  he  mentions  no  roughness  or  ex 
cesses,  except  that  the  bets  were  very  high.  The 
sport  did  not  interest  him  ;  there  was  too  much 
100 


Cavaliers  and  Tobicco '  : 


of  the  Anglo-Saxon  in  it  to  suit  a  French 
man  ;  and  he  was  amused  at  a  boy  who  kept 
leaping  for  joy  and  crying,  "  Oh,  it  is  a  charm 
ing  diversion  !" 

With  that  part  of  Virginia  near  Williams- 
burg,  along  the  James  River,  where  the  oldest 
civilization  of  the  colony  was  to  be  found,  Chas- 
tellux  was  delighted.  "  We  travelled,"  he  says, 
"six  and  twenty  miles  without  halting,  in  very 
hot  weather,  but  by  a  very  agreeable  road,  with 
magnificent  houses  in  view  at  every  instant ;  for 
the  banks  of  James  River  form  the  garden  of 
Virginia."  He  stayed  at  Westover,  where  Mrs. 
Byrd,  the  widow  of  the  famous  colonel,  received 
him  with  great  hospitality,  and  he  amused  him 
self  exploring  the  neighboring  country-seats,  ob 
serving  the  humming-birds,  and  also  the  stur 
geon,  which  at  that  time  were  so  numerous  in 
the  river  that  on  a  summer's  evening  hundreds 
of  them  could  be  seen  at  a  time  leaping  out  of 
the  water. 

The  indolence  of  the  masses  of  the  people 
did  not  escape  the  observation  of  Chastellux, 
and  he  comments  on  it  in  many  passages.  He 
also  noticed  that  in  Virginia  there  were  many 
poor  and  even  poverty-stricken  people  living  in 
misery  and  rags  in  wretched  huts,  which  was  a 
class  he  had  not  seen  in  the  Northern  colonies, 
where  in  colonial  times  there  was  scarcely  any 
101 


i-ers  and  Tobacco 

poverty  at  all  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  now 
known  or  as  he  had  known  it  in  Europe.  These 
Virginia  poor  were  of  course  what  afterwards 
became  known  as  the  poor  white  trash,  the  re 
sult  of  indolence  and  the  degradation  of  slave 
labor. 

His  visit  at  Westover  and  wanderings  in  the 
neighborhood  led  him  into  many  reflections,  one 
of  which  is  well  worth  noticing.  It  seemed  to 
him  that  the  cause  of  Virginia's  success  up  to 
that  time — the  prominent  position  she  had  taken 
in  the  Revolution,  and  the  remarkable  men  she 
had  already  produced — was  that  she  had  been 
ruled  exclusively  by  the  great  planters,  whom 
he,  like  all  other  travellers,  found  to  be  a  very 
enlightened  and  unusual  class  of  men. 

For  the  rest  of  the  people  he  seems  to  have 
had  a  great  contempt,  and  he  certainly  had  no 
confidence  in  them.  Their  indolence  and  ignor 
ance,  he  said,  had  been  an  advantage  in  the  Revo 
lution,  because  it  obliged  them  to  rely  on  the 
high-spirited  and  intelligent  planters,  who  led 
them  much  farther  than  they  would  have  gone 
without  such  guides  and  relying  on  their  own 
dispositions. 

He  prophesied  that  under  the  new  order  of 
things  since  the  Revolution,  by  which  the  masses 
of  the  people  were  being  given  more  and  more 
influence  and  control,  Virginia  would  gradually 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

sink  into  insignificance,  and  that  the  change  had 
already  begun.  His  keen  observation  showed 
him  that  although  the  masses  of  the  people 
were  of  an  excellent  race  and  stock,  the  natural 
conditions  of  climate,  soil,  and  the  presence  of 
the  negro  (whose  depressing  influence,  even  if 
given  his  freedom,  he  clearly  foresaw)  would 
keep  them  in  an  indolent  and  unprogressive 
state.  The  conditions  of  tobacco  planting  com 
bined  with  slavery  and  intellectual  influence 
from  England  which  had  built  up  the  great 
planter  class  were  merely  temporary,  and  when 
they  were  gone  that  class  would  sink  into 
the  masses  and  the  whole  become  medioc 
rity. 

Some  of  the  Virginians  of  the  upper  classes 
went  to  England  to  complete  their  education  ; 
but  it  is  noteworthy  that  none  of  the  distin 
guished  men  the  colony  produced  were  educated 
abroad.  The  great  men  of  Virginia  were  all 
natural  produces  of  their  native  soil.  Most  of 
them  were  graduates  of  William  and  Mary  Col 
lege,  which  was  founded  in  1693,  and  is  next 
after  Harvard  the  oldest  college  in  the  country. 
It  is  significant  of  the  position  which  Virginia 
and  Massachusetts  occupied  that  they  were  the 
first  colonies  to  establish  colleges. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  nearly  all 
the  students  of  William  and  Mary  joined  the  Con- 
I03 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

tinental  army.  Among  the  graduates  who  dis 
tinguished  themselves  were  Benjamin  Harrison, 
Carter  Braxton,  Thomas  Nelson,  and  George 
Wythe,  all  of  whom  signed  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  Besides  these,  the  college  has 
produced  among  her  alumni  two  attorney-gen 
erals,  seventeen  members  of  Congress,  fifteen 
senators,  seventeen  governors,  thirty-seven  judges, 
a  lieutenant-general,  two  commodores,  seven  cab 
inet  officers,  a  chief-justice,  and  three  Presidents 
of  the  United  States. 

Peyton  Randolph,  President  of  the  First 
American  Congress,  was  an  alumnus ;  so  was 
Edmund  Randolph,  Washington's  attorney-gen 
eral,  and  afterwards  Secretary  of  State.  So  was 
Thomas  Jefferson,  a  stupendous  influence,  and 
to  this  day  a  living,  aftive  force.  We  have  his 
own  word  that  it  was  the  instruction  of  Dr. 
Small  at  William  and  Mary  which  fixed  the 
destinies  of  his  life.  James  Madison  was  an 
other  alumnus ;  so  also  were  James  Monroe 
and  John  Tyler ;  and  last  and  greatest,  John 
Marshall,  the  Chief-Justice.  Marshall  alone 
would  have  been  enough  to  make  a  college 
famous,  for  our  constitution,  nationality,  and 
indissoluble  union  are  largely  the  work  of  his 
hands. 

When  we  examine  more  closely  into  details, 
we  find  that  the  roll  of  honor  is  even  longer  than 
104 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

at  first  sight  appears.  Not  only  has  the  college 
produced  conspicuously  great  men,  whose  names 
have  become  household  words,  but  she  has 
graduated  a  very  large  number  of  alumni  who 
have  been  distinguished  in  a  minor  way.  Not 
to  mention  General  Winfield  Scott,  we  find 
William  C.  Rives,  at  one  time  a  very  prominent 
man;  also  Bushrod  Washington,  James  Brecken- 
ridge,  James  P.  Preston,  George  M.  Bibb, 
William  H.  Fitzhugh,  H.  St.  George  Tucker, 
and  so  on.  In  a  list  of  graduates  of  this  sort  it 
is  possible  to  count  thirty  names  of  men  who, 
though  by  no  means  equal  to  Jefferson  or  Mar 
shall,  were  nevertheless  in  their  day  prominent 
and  powerful  leaders  in  the  service  of  either  the 
nation  or  the  State. 

To  this  must  be  added  a  large  number  of  in 
fluential  Virginia  families,  many  of  whom  were 
educated  at  the  college.  The  catalogues  of  colo 
nial  times  bristle  on  almost  every  page  with 
Carters,  Pages,  and  Randolphs.  Nor  are  the 
Harrisons,  the  Blands,  the  Nicholases,  the  Bur- 
wells,  the  Lewises,  and  the  Carringtons  without 
a  goodly  representation.  It  is  very  interesting 
sometimes  to  see  the  names  of  a  whole  family 
side  by  side,  followed  by  their  country-seat  or 
county,  and  a  statement  telling  whose  sons 
they  are.  This  is  one  branch  of  the  Carter 
family  : 

105 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

Names.  Residences.  Remarks. 

John  Carter,  Corotoman,      Son  of  Robert  Carter, 

known  as  King  Carter. 
Robert  Carter,         Sabine  Hall,    Son  of  Robert  Carter, 

known  as  King  Carter. 
George  Carter,        Nomini,  Son  of  Robert  Carter, 

known  as  King  Carter. 
Landon  Carter,        Cleve,  Son  of  Robert  Carter, 

known  as  King  Carter. 
Edward  Carter,       Blenheim,       Son  of  Robert  Carter, 

known  as  King  Carter. 

It  has  sometimes  been  said  that  the  instruc 
tion  at  William  and  Mary  was  probably  very 
inferior,  and  hardly  equal  to  that  of  an  ordi 
nary  academy.  This  may  be  true  if  we  com 
pare  it  with  modern  institutions  of  learning 
which  are  obliged  to  furnish  the  excessively 
varied  list  of  modern  studies ;  but,  compared 
with  colleges  of  its  own  time,  William  and 
Mary  was  as  good  as  any.  Chastellux,  who  cer 
tainly  was  competent  to  judge,  examined  it  very 
carefully  in  the  year  1782,  and,  although  he  may 
have  been  biassed  by  the  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Laws  which  it  gave  him,  his  extremely  favorable 
opinion  is  worthy  of  respect. 

The  college  was  situated  in  Williamsburg,  the 
capital  of  the  colony,  and  there  the  planters  and 
their  families  often  congregated  in  winter  time, 
coming  on  horseback  or  driving  in  their  great 
lumbering  coaches,  to  attend  the  courts  and  the 
106 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

sessions  of  the  burgesses,  talk  politics,  see  their 
sons,  nephews,  and  cousins  at  the  college,  and  take 
part  in  the  balls.  It  was  to  them  a  miniature 
Court  of  St.  James,  and,  with  that  ludicrous 
pride  which  often  infefts  provincial  people,  they 
sometimes  asserted  that  its  receptions  and  festi 
vals  were  more  brilliant  than  anything  in  Eng 
land. 

The  college  chapel  and  the  old  church-yard, 
where  many  eminent  men  of  the  province 
were  buried,  was  a  sort  of  Westminster  Abbey. 
The  college  contained  curious  and  rare  books 
and  manuscripts,  the  gifts  of  kings,  archbishops, 
and  governors.  The  governor's  palace,  as  his 
large  plain  house  was  pretentiously  called,  was 
the  scene  of  much  festivity,  for  which  every 
anniversary  or  important  event  in  England  or 
the  colony  served  as  an  excuse.  The  "  Apollo 
Room"  of  the  Raleigh  tavern  was  a  famous 
place  for  assemblies,  and  it  was  there  that  Jeffer 
son  danced  with  his  sweethearts  and  the  first 
afts  of  the  Revolution  were  planned. 

The  charge  which  has  been  so  persistently 
repeated,  that  the  colonial  Virginians  were  igno 
rant  and  illiterate  as  compared  with  the  New 
Englanders  and  other  people  in  the  Northern 
colonies,  is  not  borne  out  by  the  fafts.  The 
clever  phrases  of  Governor  Berkeley  in  his  re 
port  on  the  condition  of  the  colony,  which  have 
107 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

been  so  often  quoted,  largely  account  for  the  pre 
vailing  impression  : 

"  I  thank  God,"  he  said,  "  there  are  no  free  schools 
nor  printing}  and  I  hope  we  shall  not  have,  these  hundred 
years ;  for  learning  has  brought  disobedience  and  heresy 
and  seels  into  the  world,  and  printing  has  divulged  them, 
and  libels  against  the  best  government.  God  keep  us  from 
both." 

But  this  testy  statement  of  the  old  royalist 
governor  was  made  in  the  early  days  of  the 
colony,  before  Bacon's  rebellion,  and  before 
William  and  Mary  was  founded  ;  and  even  if 
true  at  the  time,  did  not  necessarily  imply  that 
the  people  were  ignorant,  for  Berkeley  himself 
explained  in  his  report  that  each  man  educated 
his  family  in  his  own  way  by  the  parish  clergy 
man  or  by  the  instruction  of  himself  or  tutors. 
They  never  had  free  schools,  and  there  was 
never  much  printing  done  in  the  colony  because 
they  relied  on  England  for  their  books,  as  for 
their  tables  and  chairs  and  everything  they  used  ; 
and  private  tutors,  the  parish  clergyman,  a  very 
few  schools,  and  a  great  deal  of  social  intercourse 
were  their  means  of  education. 

The  lower  class  of  poor  whites  was  undoubt 
edly  uneducated,  and  in  this  respect  inferior  to 
the  similar  class  in  New  England  ;  but  the  middle 
and  upper  classes  were  as  well  educated  and  ac 
complished  as  any  other  people  in  the  country, 
108 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

and  in  natural  brightness  and  mother-wit  there 
were  very  few  that  could  equal  them.  The  oc 
casional  glimpses  we  get  of  plantation  life  not 
infrequently  disclose  an  interest  in  culture  and  in 
other  subjects  besides  politics. 

The  works  of  Addison,  Steele,  Pope,  Congreve, 
and  Prior  were  common  in  the  great  plantation 
houses.  Isham  Randolph,  a  planter  on  the  James 
with  a  hundred  slaves,  was  interested  in  botany 
and  corresponded  on  the  subject  with  learned 
men.  There  were  several  other  gentlemen  in 
the  province  interested  in  the  same  science. 

That  genial  character  Colonel  William  Byrd 
devoted  his  leisure  to  literature  and  the  sciences, 
and  his  private  library,  said  to  have  been  the  best 
in  the  colonies,  contained  three  thousand  six 
hundred  and  twenty-five  volumes.  John  Ran 
dolph's  library  was  almost  as  large,  and  some  said 
larger.  Madison,  Jefferson,  Mason,  and  other 
noted  men  had  also  good  collections  of  books  ; 
and  in  a  note  to  the  introduction  to  the  volume 
of  the  Spotswood  Letters  there  is  an  account  of 
thirty  families  which  seem  to  have  had  fairly  good 
libraries,  from  which  books  often  containing  ar 
morial  book-plates  have  come  down  to  our  time. 

If  the  upper-class  Virginians    had   not   been 

educated  men  it  would  certainly  have  been  most 

extraordinary,    for  the    ineffaceable    mark    they 

have  left  on  history  is  one  of  intellect  and  not 

109 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

of  brute  force.  Judge  the  tree  by  its  fruit. 
If  Washington,  Jefferson,  Madison,  Marshall, 
Mason,  Henry,  Pendleton,  and  Lee  were  the 
result  of  an  ignorant  and  illiterate  community, 
then  let  us  have  as  much  ignorance  and  as  little 
education  as  possible. 

Tobacco-planting,  like  the  rice-planting  of 
Carolina,  was  a  very  speculative  occupation,  and 
added  a  dash  of  recklessness  to  the  Virginian's 
character,  tempting  him  to  great  risks  and  bold 
undertakings.  The  price  varied  so  much  at  dif 
ferent  periods  that  sometimes  there  was  an  enor 
mous  profit  and  sometimes  a  heavy  loss.  This, 
combined  with  the  inveterate  propensity  of  both 
the  men  and  women  to  gamble,  made  fortunes 
uncertain,  and  many,  like  Colonel  Byrd's,  were 
lost  in  this  way,  and  many  families  had  to  begin 
life  anew. 

It  was  a  strange  civilization,  this  tobacco  aris 
tocracy  of  about  two  hundred  years,  dependent 
for  its  success  on  a  single  producl,  not  altogether 
a  useful  one,  and  supported  by  negro  slavery, 
which  the  moral  sense  of  the  world  has  always 
considered  a  crime.  But  the  system  produced 
wealth,  leisure,  and  the  results  of  independence 
and  intelligence ;  and  the  long-leaved  narcotic 
plant  accomplished  as  much  in  creating  the 
American  Union  as  the  rice  of  Carolina  and  the 
schooners  and  codfish  of  New  England. 
no 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

It  of  course  had  within  it  the  seeds  of  its  final 
overthrow.  There  was  a  rift  in  the  lute,  a  rot 
tenness  at  the  core,  and  in  this  respeft  Virginia 
was  inferior  to  Massachusetts,  whose  foundations 
were  more  stable.  Slavery  could  not  continue 
forever  in  face  of  the  protests  of  the  world,  and 
tobacco-raising  exhausted  the  soil. 

The  usual  method  of  culture  was  to  plant 
tobacco  in  the  same  ground  for  five  years  in 
succession.  At  the  end  of  that  time,  fertility 
being  exhausted,  the  land  was  allowed  to  grow 
up  in  pines,  and  the  primeval  forest  was  cleared 
from  some  other  traft  for  another  five  years' 
cropping.  So  long  as  there  was  any  virgin  soil 
in  Virginia  this  system  was  very  profitable. 
Grain  was  cultivated  in  an  equally  wasteful 
manner.  Corn  and  wheat  were  allowed  to  suc 
ceed  each  other  on  the  same  ground  without  the 
intervention  of  clover  or  any  crop  that  would 
restore  fertility,  and  there  was  no  manuring. 

Virginia  lived  by  moving  from  one  virgin 
tradl  to  another,  and  she  never  restored  any 
of  the  wealth  she  took  from  the  earth.  The 
slaves  who  passed  the  summer  in  harvesting  the 
crops  were  employed  all  winter  in  cutting  away 
the  forests  to  supply  fresh  material  for  this 
spendthrift  system  of  agriculture. 

Virginia  was  always  living  on  her  capital,  and 
she  came  to  the  end  of  it  at  last.  When  there 
in 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

was  no  more  new  soil  for  tobacco,  and  other 
countries  had  begun  to  compete  in  its  culture, 
the  great  wealth  of  the  Virginians  was  gone. 
After  the  Revolution  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil 
and  the  competition  in  tobacco  brought  on  a 
steady  shrinkage  of  values,  and  the  flame  of 
Virginia's  genius  burnt  lower  and  lower.  One 
by  one  the  distinguished  families  were  reduced 
to  poverty  and  oblivion,  and  among  them  none 
suffered  more  than  Jefferson  and  Madison.  The 
story  of  Jefferson's  last  years,  when  with  failing 
fortunes  he  struggled  to  keep  up  on  his  planta 
tion  the  old  life  and  hospitality,  is  most  pathetic; 
and  Mrs.  Madison,  after  her  husband's  death, 
was  assisted  by  charity. 

Virginia  hospitality,  which  was  so  easy  and 
generous,  was  intended  for  near  neighbors, 
relatives,  or  the  occasional  traveller  in  a  wild 
country.  But  in  later  times,  when  Jefferson  and 
Madison  had  world-wide  reputations,  and  all  the 
means  of  travel  had  improved,  they  were  beset 
by  tourists  and  curiosity  hunters  who  had  heard 
of  the  Virginia  hospitality  and  thought  they 
would  like  to  try  it  at  a  great  man's  house  and 
save  a  tavern  bill. 

Not  realizing  that  times  and  conditions  had 
changed,  Jefferson  felt  bound  in  honor  to  him 
self,  his  family,  and  his  State  to  receive  all  these 
people  with  the  open  heart  and  hand  of  old  times. 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

His  overseer,  Captain  Bacon,  describes  his  hope 
less  efforts  to  prevent  these  so-called  friends  and 
admirers  from  eating  his  master  out  of  house  and 
home  : 

"  They  were  there  all  times  of  the  year;  but  about  the 
middle  of  June  the  travel  would  commence  from  the  lower 
part  of  the  State  to  the  Springs,  and  then  there  was  a  per 
fect  throng  of  visitors.  They  travelled  in  their  own  car 
riages  and  came  in  gangs,  the  whole  family  with  carriage 
and  riding  horses  and  servants,  sometimes  three  or  four 
such  gangs  at  a  time.  We  had  thirty-six  stalls  for  horses, 
and  only  used  ten  of  them  for  the  stock  we  kept  there. 
Very  often  all  of  the  rest  were  full  and  I  had  to  send 
horses  off  to  another  place.  I  have  often  sent  a  wagon- 
load  of  hay  up  to  the  stable,  and  the  next  morning  there 
would  not  be  enough  left  to  make  a  bird's  nest.  I  have 
killed  a  fine  beef  and  it  would  be  all  eaten  in  a  day  or  two." 

John  Randolph  of  Roanoke,  as  he  was  called, 
shows  the  Virginia  intellect  in  the  beginning  of 
its  decay.  He  was  born  in  1773,  and  his  forma 
tive  period  was  passed  after  the  Revolution, 
when  the  old  life  was  changing  and,  as  Chas- 
tellux  would  say,  the  ignorant  and  lax  lower 
classes  were  beginning  to  overwhelm  the  high- 
strung  spirit  of  the  aristocracy.  He  was  an  odd 
character,  dressed  in  the  old-fashioned  manner, 
and  used  to  come  into  Congress  with  top-boots 
on,  followed  by  two  pointer  dogs,  which  were 
constantly  running  in  and  out  to  the  annoy 
ance  of  the  members.  He,  however,  always 
VOL.  I.— 8  11 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

rode  a  fine  horse,  and  was  accompanied  by  a 
negro  body-servant  mounted  on  an  equally  good 
one.  He  was  very  particular  never  to  ride  his 
servant's  or  allow  the  servant  to  ride  his. 

He  had  undoubted  ability,  and  dominated  Con 
gress  with  a  force  and  vehemence  which  were 
difficult  to  resist.  Henry  Clay  was  elected  a 
member  principally  for  the  purpose  of  check 
ing  him.  But  Randolph's  leadership  and  power 
were  of  the  bullying  kind  ;  he  did  not  win  and 
convince  forever,  like  the  old  Virginians.  His 
triumphs  were  temporary  and  aroused  vindiftive- 
ness  and  hatred.  He  was  eccentric,  vacillating, 
and  inconsistent, — marks  of  weakness  which  are 
looked  for  in  vain  in  the  school  of  Washington 
and  Marshall.  He  was  also  undignified, — a  point 
in  which  his  predecessors  never  failed  ;  and  he 
was  inclined  to  fierce  inveftive  and  personal  vio 
lence, — caning  and  duelling, — which  sprang  up 
among  the  Virginians  and  other  Southerners  after 
the  Revolution. 

This  sudden  appearance  of  a  fondness  for  per 
sonal  violence,  which  afterwards  developed  to 
ridiculous  excesses,  is  a  strange  phenomenon 
and  difficult  to  account  for,  unless  that  after  the 
Revolution  the  spirit  of  the  gouging,  fighting, 
and  ignorant  lower  classes  got  possession  of  the 
whole  community  in  consequence  of  the  change 
to  democratic  government. 
114 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

In  Randolph's  time,  however,  the  fighting 
disposition  had  developed  no  farther  than  the 
duel.  Revolvers,  bowie  knives,  blackguarding, 
and  street  assassination  were  not  yet  known ; 
and  Randolph  had  the  honor  of  taking  part  in 
one  of  the  last  of  the  high-toned  duels,  as  they 
were  afterwards  called. 

He  had  grossly  insulted  Henry  Clay,  imply 
ing  that  he  was  a  blackleg  and  a  forger.  Clay's 
first  shot  cut  the  skirt  of  Randolph's  coat.  He 
fired  again  ;  but  Randolph,  raising  his  pistol  in 
the  air,  said,  "  I  do  not  fire  at  you,  Mr.  Clay," 
stepped  forward,  and  offered  him  his  hand.  This 
was  his  way  of  saying  that  he  regretted  the  in 
sult,  but  after  being  challenged  could  not  apolo 
gize  for  it. 

It  required  nearly  half  a  century  of  gradual 
shrinkage  to  bring  the  inevitable  end  in  Virginia, 
arid  when  it  came,  the  people,  incapable  of 
manufacturing  or  commerce,  turned  their  atten 
tion  to  ordinary  unprofitable  farming  on  ex 
hausted  land  and  the  breeding  of  negroes  until 
the  civil  war  stripped  them  of  even  this  last  re 
sort.  The  important  life  in  Virginia  is  now 
centred  in  towns,  as  in  other  parts  of  the  Union, 
and  the  old  plantation  and  country  life  has  com 
pletely  disappeared. 

Whether  the  State  will  ever  again  be  heard 
from  and  rise  to  superiority  or  ascendency  as  in 
"5 


Cavaliers  and  Tobacco 

the  past  is  an  interesting  but  an  extremely  diffi 
cult  question.  The  same  race,  the  pure  Anglo 
Saxon  blood  which  was  once  capable  of  such 
eminence,  is  still  there ;  but  it  may  remain  sunk 
in  the  indolence  of  the  climate  and  the  terrible 
incubus  of  the  free  negro,  with  whom  social 
equality  is  impossible  and  whose  influence  is 
degrading ;  for,  as  Chastellux  said,  the  colonial 
Virginians  seem  to  have  been  inspired  and  raised 
from  the  enervating  conditions  by  which  they 
were  surrounded  only  by  the  pride  and  stimulus 
of  the  old  tobacco  aristocracy  which  has  passed 
away.  In  a  community  where  the  mass  of  the 
people  is  composed  of  negroes  and  indolent 
whites  the  degenerating  influences  can  scarcely 
be  held  in  check  by  any  form  of  government 
short  of  an  oligarchy. 


CHAPTER    II 

PURITANS     AND     WITCHES     TO     LITERATURE 
AND    PHILOSOPHY 


FROM 


we  leave  Virginia  and  begin  to  con 
sider  Massachusetts  and  New  England 
we  are  at  once  struck  by  the  contrast.  Instead 
of  the  soft  climate,  fertile  soil,  low  sandy  shores, 
and  wide  rivers  of  Chesapeake  Bay,  we  have  the 
rock-bound  coast,  the  barren  land,  the  fir-trees, 
and  the  harsh  climate  of  pifturesque  but  stern 
New  England.  Instead  of  men  "  in  gentlemanly 
conformity  to  the  Church  of  England,"  pleasure 
loving  and  easy  and  indolent  in  manners,  we 
must  deal  with  stiff,  solemn  individuals,  devoted 
to  schools,  colleges,  and  learning,  to  whom  amuse 
ment  was  a  crime,  whose  lives  were  completely 
117 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

absorbed  in  religion,  and  who  were  among  the 
most  unrelenting  fanatics  the  world  has  ever  seen. 

Instead  of  a  people  who  lived  for  and  loved 
the  outer  world  and  its  pleasures,  we  have  men 
and  women  whose  thoughts  were  turned  inward 
on  themselves,  and  who  developed  their  faculties 
of  introspection  and  self-analysis  to  the  utmost 
extreme.  Instead  of  the  Virginia  form  of  gov 
ernment,  strangely  compounded  of  aristocratic 
pride  and  Saxon  liberty,  we  have  a  civil  polity 
modelled  on  the  Kingdom  of  Israel,  with  the 
words  of  the  Old  Testament  for  a  code,  and  be 
lieved  by  its  upholders  to  be  the  voice  of  God 
on  earth.  Instead  of  an  agricultural  population, 
without  commerce  or  manufactures,  widely  dis 
persed  on  large  estates,  without  towns  or  villages, 
and  leading  the  lives  of  planters  and  sportsmen, 
we  have  a  people  living  exclusively  in  small  towns 
and  devoted  to  fishing,  ship-building,  and  trade. 

The  early  voyagers  and  settlers  were  always 
pleased  with  Virginia  and  the  South.  The 
mild  air  and  the  richness  of  the  vegetation  gave 
promise  of  comfort  and  wealth.  But  no  one, 
except  some  enthusiast  like  Captain  John  Smith, 
could  ever  take  much  delight  in  his  first  ex 
perience  of  New  England.*  It  might  please 

*  This  description  of  New  England  would  not  have  been 
relished  by  the  Puritan  Fathers,  and  it  would  not  have 

118 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

the  lover  of  nature,  but  it  hardly  satisfied  the 
pioneer  in  search  of  prosperity  and  peace.  It 
was  comparatively  easy  to  tempt  colonists  to  go 
to  fertile  Virginia,  but  it  required  religious  zeal  of 
the  most  uncompromising  kind  to  plant  a  colony 
in  New  England. 

Massachusetts  was  settled  by  two  colonies. 
First  by  the  Plymouth  colony,  in  1620,  and  ten 
years  afterwards  by  the  colony  of  Massachusetts 
Bay.  The  first,  or  Plymouth  colony,  usually 
known  as  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  was  composed  of 
people  who  in  religion  were  called  Brownists,  or 
Independents,  and  they  established  themselves  on 
the  coast  at  a  place  they  named  New  Plymouth, 
opposite  Cape  Cod,  about  thirty  miles  south  of 
Boston.  The  Massachusetts  Bay  people  were 
Puritans,  and  settled  on  the  shores  of  what  is 
now  Boston  Harbor. 

The  two  colonies  were  quite  distinct  in  char- 
after  and  opinions.  The  Independents  of  the 
Plymouth  colony  were  dissenters  who  had  en 
tirely  separated  themselves  from  the  Church  of 
England,  and  had  been  in  consequence  severely 
persecuted.  Their  opinions  were  very  much 
the  same  as  are  now  held  by  the  Congre- 

been  safe  to  have  uttered  it  among  them.  They  once 
haled  a  man  before  the  General  Court  because  he  had 
said  that  New  England  was  nothing  but  "  rocks,  sand,  and 
salt  marshes."  (Winthrop,  p.  173.) 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

gationalists.  They  believed  that  each  congre 
gation  should  govern  itself,  and  that  there  should 
be  no  general  and  united  church  organization 
controlling  all  the  parishes  and  congregations. 

They  denied  the  necessity  of  regularly  ordained 
clergymen  deriving  their  authority  from  bishops 
who  professed  to  be  the  legitimate  successors  of 
the  apostles.  Their  worship  was  very  simple, 
consisting  of  sermons  and  extemporaneous  prayers 
without  ceremony  or  ritual,  and  they  of  course 
repudiated  all  the  doclrines  which  the  Church 
of  Rome  had  developed  during  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  small  company  of  them,  numbering  about 
a  hundred,  which  landed  at  Plymouth  Rock, 
were  mostly  natives  of  Lincolnshire,  England, 
where  they  had  been  hunted  down  and  perse 
cuted  until  they  fled  to  Holland,  where  they 
lived  first  at  Amsterdam,  afterwards  at  Leyden 
for  twelve  years.  They  worked  at  various  small 
trades,  and  helped  one  another  like  the  Christians 
of  the  primitive  Church.  But  they  were  wretch 
edly  poor,  and  seeing  no  prospeft  of  any  im 
provement  in  their  condition,  they  obtained, 
through  the  assistance  of  some  merchants,  the 
means  of  reaching  America. 

Crowded  on  board  that  immortal  ship,  the 
Mayflower,  and  guided  by  Captain  John  Smith's 
map,  they  reached  the  coast  of  Massachusetts  in 
November,  1620.  They  intended  to  proceed 

120 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

southward  to  the  Hudson  River,  where  they 
had  obtained  a  grant  of  land  from  the  Virginia 
Company  ;  but  becoming  involved  in  the  shoals 
near  Cape  Cod,  they  landed  on  the  extreme  end 
of  that  cape,  at  what  is  now  Provincetown,  where 
vessels  still  seek  shelter  from  the  gales  of  the 
Atlantic,  and  after  some  weeks  of  exploration 
they  established  themselves  at  their  final  settle 
ment  on  the  mainland. 

They  were  far  superior  in  respeftability  and 
education  to  the  people  who  had  founded  the 
colony  of  Virginia  thirteen  years  before,  but 
they  resembled  them  in  knowing  nothing  of 
camp  life  and  the  difficulties  of  a  wilderness. 
The  Virginians  had  had  the  advantage  of  ar 
riving  in  the  month  of  May,  in  a  mild  climate, 
with  abundance  of  game,  an  advantage  which 
was  soon  offset  by  the  malarial  fevers  which  de 
stroyed  so  many  of  them.  But  the  Plymouth 
colonists  arriving  in  November  were  obliged  at 
once  to  face  the  cold  and  barrenness  of  the  New 
England  coast,  which  proved  to  be  almost  as 
destructive  as  the  fevers  of  Virginia,  for  nearly 
half  of  them  perished  within  six  months. 

They  were  industrious  and  thrifty,  and  while 
they  lacked  skill  as  woodsmen  and  hunters,  they 
made  excellent  soldiers.  Miles  Standish  drilled 
and  disciplined  them,  and  their  village  was  an 
armed  camp  rather  than  a  colony.  Isaac  De 

121 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Rasiers,    a    Dutchman    from    New    York,  who 
visited  them  in  1627,  describes  their  life: 

"  Upon  the  hill  they  have  a  large  square  house,  with  a 
flat  roof  made  of  thick  sawn  planks,  stayed  with  oak 
beams,  upon  the  top  of  which  they  have  six  cannons, 
which  shoot  iron  balls  of  four  or  five  pounds,  and  com 
mand  the  surrounding  country.  The  lower  part  they  use 
for  their  church,  where  they  preach  on  Sundays  and  the 
usual  holidays.  They  assemble  by  beat  of  drum,  each 
with  his  musket  or  fire-lock,  in  front  of  the  captain's 
door  j  they  have  their  cloaks  on,  and  place  themselves  in 
order,  three  abreast,  and  are  led  by  a  sergeant  without  beat 
of  drum.  Behind  comes  the  governor,  in  a  long  robe; 
beside  him  on  the  right  hand  comes  the  preacher  with  his 
cloak  on,  and  on  the  left  hand  the  captain  with  his  side 
arms  and  cloak  on,  and  a  small  cane  in  his  hand ;  and  so 
they  march  in  good  order,  and  each  sets  his  arms  down 
near  him."  (Bradford's  "  Plymouth,"  p.  126.) 

This  careful  system  of  defence  was  forced  on 
them  by  their  small  numbers  and  the  danger 
from  Indians.  When  their  sentinel  paced  his 
rounds  at  night  he  had  no  waking  companions 
on  the  vast  continent  of  black  forest  save  the 
Dutch  guard  two  hundred  miles  away  at  Fort 
Amsterdam,  on  the  Hudson,  and  the  careless 
Virginian  probably  sleeping  at  his  post  at  James 
town,  on  the  Chesapeake.  They  were  unable 
to  spread  out  and  occupy  the  country.  They 
had  to  remain  huddled  together  in  their  village, 
with  its  fort  on  the  hill,  and  live  by  fishing  and 

122 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

trade  with  the  Dutch  or  the  English  vessels  that 
visited  the  coast.  Their  garden  patches  were 
kept  close  to  the  village,  and  it  was  with  great 
caution  and  very  gradually  that  they  began  to 
occupy  outlying  districts. 

At  the  end  of  ten  years,  with  the  assistance 
of  new  arrivals  from  England,  they  numbered 
only  about  two  hundred  and  fifty.  At  the  end 
of  seventy  years,  in  1691,  when  they  were  ab 
sorbed  by  the  Puritans  of  Massachusetts  Bay, 
they  numbered  only  about  nine  thousand.  They 
were  not  a  success  as  a  colony,  and  they  were 
not,  as  the  orators  would  have  us  believe,  the 
creators  of  New  England  and  the  United  States. 

The  dramatic  incident  of  their  first  landing 
on  Plymouth  Rock  has  been  used  to  exaggerate 
their  merits  and  to  credit  them  with  all  the 
good  things  that  afterwards  happened  on  the 
continent,  and  they  are  supposed  to  have  estab 
lished  liberty,  republican  government,  and  all 
that  is  valuable  in  American  institutions. 

But,  as  a  matter  of  faft,  they  were  scarcely 
able  to  establish  themselves,  and  they  had  none 
of  that  fierce  energy  for  development  which 
characterized  the  Puritans.  They  were  excel 
lent  people  in  many  ways,  and  less  intolerant 
and  illiberal  than  the  Puritans ;  but  they  were 
completely  overwhelmed  by  the  Puritans,  who 
were  the  real  creators  of  New  England,  and  who 
123 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

numbered  thirty  thousand  in  1691  when  the 
Plymouth  people  were  only  nine  thousand. 

Our  historical  literature  is  full  of  attempts  to 
fix  on  some  one  point  or  set  of  men  as  the  source 
of  American  liberty.  Virginia  has  claimed  the 
honor,  so  also  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  Massa 
chusetts,  the  Dutch  of  New  York,  and  the  Penn 
sylvania  Germans.  But  all  the  claims  are  un 
founded,  for  there  was  no  one  set  of  people  in 
England  who  in  that  time  had  a  monopoly  of 
the  principles  of  free  government. 

The  Englishmen  who  settled  the  American 
colonies,  whether  Cavaliers,  Quakers,  or  Round 
heads,  were  all  familiar  with  the  dodlrines  of  lib 
erty.  The  English  revolution  was  beginning  at 
that  time,  and  such  principles  were  the  subject 
of  intense  discussion  and  were  known  to  every 
one.  Democratic  ideas  crept  into  America  by 
Chesapeake  Bay,  by  the  Delaware,  by  the  Hud 
son,  by  the  Connecticut,  by  Narragansett  Bay, 
and  even  the  intolerant  Puritans  had  democratic 
instinfts  which  showed  themselves  as  soon  as 
the  old  shell  of  Puritanism  was  worn  away. 

The  Puritans  who  formed  the  second  colony 
at  Massachusetts  Bay  were  a  party  within  the 
Church  of  England.  They  had  not  separated 
and  become  dissenters,  like  the  Independents, 
but  were  working  to  change  and,  as  they  thought, 
purify  the  English  church.  They  would  not, 
124 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

they  said,  overset  the  house ;  but  they  wanted 
to  sweep  it. 

It  was  not  enough  for  them  that  the  English 
church  had  thrown  off  the  authority  of  the  Pope, 
abolished  the  sale  of  indulgences  and  other  cor 
ruptions,  and  rejected  the  great  mass  of  dogmas 
that  had  been  developed  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
Other  things  must  go, — the  prayers  read  from  a 
book,  the  surplice,  the  sign  of  the  cross  in  bap 
tism,  the  ring  in  marriage,  the  rite  of  confirma 
tion,  bowing  at  the  name  of  Jesus,  and  every 
thing  appealing  to  the  imagination,  which  they 
described  as  "  marks  of  the  beast  and  dregs  of 
antichrist."  They  wanted  to  reduce  Christianity 
to  its  most  primitive  form  of  four  bare  walls  and 
the  literal  words  of  the  Bible. 

They  were  also  very  much  opposed  to  the 
authority  of  the  bishops,  and  they  had  adopted 
the  Calvinistic  belief  in  predestination  and 
election,  which  they  wished  to  force  on  the 
English  church  as  one  of  its  doctrines.  In 
church  government  they  were  somewhat  divided. 
Some  of  them  inclined  to  the  independent  plan  ; 
but  most  of  them  were  unwilling  to  go  so  far. 
They  had  no  desire,  to  disorganize  the  English 
establishment  and,  as  one  of  them  put  it,  make 
every  man's  hat  his  church  ;  and  in  the  end 
they  established  in  Massachusetts  a  system  which 
was  midway  between  the  free  democracy  of 
125 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

the  Independents  and  the  more  complicated 
republican  form  of  synods  and  representative 
assemblies  adopted  by  the  Presbyterians.  Their 
system  has  been  called  Massachusetts  Congre 
gationalism  because  it  was  somewhat  different 
from  pure  Congregationalism  or  independency. 

Unlike  the  Plymouth  people,  the  Puritans 
were  a  great  power  in  England,  strong  in  num 
bers,  unafflicled  by  poverty,  and  not  compelled 
to  hide  or  flee  to  Holland.  In  the  early  years 
of  the  reign  of  Charles  I.,  before  their  party 
rose  to  power  under  Cromwell,  many  of  them 
had  become  hopeless  of  reducing  the  Church 
of  England  to  what  they  believed  to  be  the  true 
faith,  and  several  expeditions  went  to  the  coast 
of  Massachusetts  in  the  neighborhood  of  Cape 
Ann  to  establish  a  settlement. 

They  were  unsuccessful  at  first ;  but  the  in 
creasing  despotism  under  King  Charles  aroused 
a  greater  anxiety  to  leave  England,  and  the  Dor 
chester  company  was  founded  in  1628  and  sup 
ported  by  the  most  influential  and  wealthy  of 
the  Puritans.  The  next  year  this  company  was 
enlarged,  and  under  the  new  name  of  the 
Governor  and  Company  of  Massachusetts  Bay, 
was  incorporated  by  a  royal  charter  and  given  a 
grant  of  the  land  lying  between  the  Merrimac 
and  Charles  Rivers  and  extending  westward  to 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  an  extremely  narrow  strip 
126 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

which  did  not  include  the  Plymouth  colony 
which  lay  south  of  it. 

The  charter  was  most  liberal  in  its  pro 
visions.  The  members  of  the  company  were 
allowed  to  elecl:  their  governor  and  all  other 
officers  without  any  control  from  the  king  ;  nor 
were  they  obliged  to  submit  their  laws  to  the 
crown  for  approval.  In  faft,  it  gave  them  virtual 
independence  ;  and  the  most  probable  explana 
tion  of  this  extreme  liberality  is  that  no  definite 
colonial  policy  had  been  formulated  at  that  time, 
except  that  it  was  important  to  encourage  col 
onists  to  go  to  America  in  the  hope  that  they 
would  check  the  expansion  of  the  Dutch  settle 
ments  at  New  York  and  gain  the  continent  for 
Great  Britain.  The  Puritans  were  becoming  very 
troublesome  in  politics  as  well  as  in  religion,  and 
it  would  be  a  relief  to  get  rid  of  some  of  them. 

A  few  months  after  they  obtained  their  charter 
they  made  a  most  judicious  move,  which  they 
had  prepared  for  at  the  outset  of  their  enter 
prise.  The  charter  said  nothing  about  the  loca 
tion  of  the  governing  body.  The  Virginia 
charter  made  England  the  head-quarters  of  the 
company.  But  the  Massachusetts  charter  was 
silent  on  the  subjeft.  The  company,  therefore, 
passed  a  resolution  removing  the  charter  and  the 
whole  government  of  the  colony  to  Massa 
chusetts.  If  the  governing  body  had  remained 
127 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

in  England,  the  distance  would  have  prevented 
the  colonists  from  becoming  active  members  of 
it ;  but  if  transferred  to  Massachusetts,  the  col 
onists  would  become  its  officers  :  the  colony 
and  the  corporation  would  be  one.  Thus  these 
pious  souls  snapped  the  last  thread  of  home  in 
fluence  and,  taking  in  their  hands  their  govern 
ment  as  well  as  their  goods,  slipped  off  into  the 
wilderness  to  become  independent. 

On  the  eve  of  their  departure  they  announced 
that  they  were  still  members  of  the  Church  of 
England,  and  in  their  farewell  address  declared 
that  they  were  not  to  be  thought  of  as  loathing 
the  milk  wherewith  they  had  been  nourished, 
that  they  esteemed  it  an  honor  to  call  the  church 
their  dear  mother,  that  any  hope  of  salvation 
they  possessed  had  been  received  in  her  bosom 
and  sucked  from  her  breasts,  and  they  concluded 
by  asking  for  her  prayers. 

The  address  was  all  in  the  rather  unftuous 
tone  common  among  the  Puritans,  and  has  been 
somewhat  unfairly  described  as  a  mere  hypo 
critical  cloak  to  cover  their  real  intentions  and 
check  interference.  They  certainly  had  no 
sooner  landed  in  Massachusetts  than  they  gave 
up  every  vestige  of  the  Church  of  England, 
banished  two  of  their  number  who  insisted  on 
using  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and  organ 
ized  their  churches  without  either  clergy  or 
128 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

bishops,  who,  in  the  language  of  the  time,  they 
regarded  as  "  biting  beasts  and  whelps  of  the 
Roman  litter." 

When  charged  with  separatism,  they  always 
denied  it ;  but  when  closely  pressed  replied  that 
they  were  separating  from  corruptions  and  not 
from  the  church.  They  believed  themselves  to 
be  the  true  Church  of  England,  just  as  every 
political  party  believes  itself  to  be  the  true 
government,  and  they  clung  to  that  idea  for 
many  years  after  they  had  developed  the  Massa 
chusetts  system  far  beyond  anything  that  was 
recognized  by  the  mother-church  in  England. 

They  were  the  most  sturdy,  virile,  and  ac 
complished  men  that  had  thus  far  attempted  to 
establish  a  colony,  and  in  these  respects  they 
have  perhaps  never  been  equalled  by  any  body 
of  English  colonists.  Large  numbers  of  them 
were  men  of  more  or  less  means  who  came 
amply  provided,  and  a  very  large  proportion 
were  men  of  excellent  education,  bred  in  the 
English  universities,  and  thoroughly  convinced 
that  religion  was  a  question  which  demanded  the 
deepest  learning  and  research  and  the  keenest 
logic. 

They  were  on  fire  with  the  most  determined 
enthusiasm  to  establish  their  own  religion  by 
this  means  and  convince  the  whole  world  of  its 
truth.  Those  who  were  so  vicious  or  ignorant 

VOL.  I.— 9  129 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

as  not  to  accept  it  as  the  truth  were  to  be  ban 
ished,  or  if  wicked  enough  actively  to  resist  it, 
should  be  put  to  death. 

They  settled  down  in  the  wilderness  as 
students  and  strong,  determined  men  who  in 
tended  to  enforce  the  result  of  their  studies  with 
the  musket  and  the  hangman's  rope.  Their 
ministers  and  leading  men  had  their  books,  and 
connected  with  their  houses  many  of  them  had 
their  little  library  or  study,  to  which  they  were 
devotedly  attached.  In  some  of  their  diaries 
we  read  that  their  greatest  dread  of  death  was 
that  they  would  never  again  enter  the  room 
of  their  books,  which  had  given  them  such 
delight. 

For  ten  years,  from  1630  to  1640,  they  left 
England  in  increasing  numbers,  and  at  the  close 
of  that  period  fifteen  thousand  of  them  had 
settled  in  Massachusetts,  far  outnumbering  the 
little  Plymouth  colony  ;  and  indeed  a  large  part 
of  the  small  increase  in  numbers  at  Plymouth 
seems  to  have  been  due  to  the  overflow  from 
the  Puritans  in  the  neighborhood  of  Boston. 

After  1640  there  was  no  more  emigration  to 
Massachusetts  or  the  rest  of  New  England,  be 
cause  the  Puritans  in  England,  under  the  leader 
ship  of  Cromwell,  were  rising  into  power  and 
saw  their  opportunity  to  accomplish  all  they 
desired  in  religion  and  politics.  If  Cromwell's 
130 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

party  had  not  been  successful,  it  is  highly  prob 
able  that  nearly  all  the  Puritans  would  have 
come  to  New  England.  In  facl,  their  leaders 
seem  to  have  had  this  in  view,. and  they  might 
have  been  able  to  establish  such  a  powerful 
commonwealth  that  they  could  have  declared 
and  maintained  complete  independence. 

From  1640,  New  England  received  no  immi 
grants  until  after  1820,  when  the  modern  immi 
gration  of  Irish  and  French  Canadians  began.  In 
that  period,  from  1640  to  1820,  her  population, 
being  of  the  same  race  and  religion,  became 
very  homogeneous  and  united,  and  increased  by 
the  natural  method  of  births  at  a  more  rapid 
rate  than  it  has  increased  in  modern  times  with 
the  aid  of  all  the  foreigners  that  have  been 
poured  upon  the  country.  In  that  period  pre 
vious  to  1820  the  New  Englanders  not  only 
rilled  up  their  own  limits  and  became  the  lead 
ing  seftion  of  the  Union,  but  also  overflowed 
into  New  York  and  the  West. 

The  Puritans  had  no  sooner  established  them 
selves  at  Boston  and  Cambridge,  and  spread  along 
the  shores  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  than  they  set 
about  creating  a  religious  oligarchy  and  making 
themselves  as  independent  of  England  as  pos 
sible.  No  one  could  become  a  freeman  and 
have  the  privilege  of  voting  unless  he  was  a 
member  of  some  church;  and  under  the  Puritan 
"31 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

system  membership  in  a  church  meant  that  one 
had  shown  visible  evidence  of  conversion  and 
change  of  heart,  and  had  been  accepted  by- 
some  congregation.  The  examination  into  the 
religious  experience  of  a  candidate  was  very 
severe,  and  only  a  small  part  of  the  inhabitants 
could  pass  it ;  so  that  the  fundamental  principle 
of  the  Puritan  government  disfranchised  a  large 
majority  of  the  population. 

In  1634,  wnen  tne  colony  numbered  about 
four  thousand,  there  were  only  three  hundred 
and  fifty  freemen  ;  and  in  1670,  when  the  popu 
lation  numbered  about  twenty-five  thousand, 
there  were  only  about  eleven  hundred  freemen. 
As  a  general  rule,  out  of  every  four  or  five  adult 
males  only  one  was  a  freeman ;  and  this  disfran 
chised  majority,  which  included  from  three- 
fourths  to  four-fifths  of  the  able-bodied  men  of 
the  colony,  had  no  more  part  or  lot  in  the  gov 
ernment  than  the  women  and  children. 

This  aristocracy  of  saints  which  had  so  little 
regard  for  the  liberty  of  those  who  had  not 
taken  strongly  to  religion  was,  however,  very 
careful  of  the  liberties  of  the  colony,  and  had 
determined,  as  far  as  possible,  to  make  it  inde 
pendent  of  England.  They  soon  ceased  to 
issue  writs  in  the  king's  name.  They  dropped 
the  English  oath  of  allegiance  and  adopted  a 
new  oath,  in  which  public  officers  and  all  the 
132 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

inhabitants  swore  allegiance,  not  to  England, 
but  to  Massachusetts. 

Any  one  who  refused  to  take  this  oath  was 
banished  or  disqualified  from  holding  office. 
They  also  took  upon  themselves  the  sovereign 
attribute  of  coining  their  own  money,  and  issued 
the  famous  pine-tree  shillings.  No  appeals 
were  allowed  to  the  king  or  to  the  English 
courts  ;  it  was  treason  even  to  speak  of  them. 
By  their  definition  of  treason,  the  king  himself 
would  have  been  guilty  of  it  if  he  had  attempted 
to  interfere  with  Massachusetts. 

They  hardly  dared  to  adopt  an  ensign  of 
their  own  ;  but  some  of  them,  instigated  as  is 
supposed  by  Roger  Williams,  cut  out  of  the 
English  flag  the  cross  of  St.  George,  which  they 
said  was  idolatrous.  Soon  after,  when  some 
captains  threatened  to  report  in  England  that  no 
flag  was  displayed  on  the  fort  at  Castle  Island, 
the  assistants,  as  the  governor's  council  was 
called,  debated  the  question  at  great  length, 
discussing  after  the  Puritan  fashion  the  nature 
of  emblems  in  general  and  all  the  principles 
involved,  and  finally  told  the  captains  that  they 
had  no  English  flag. 

A  captain  promptly  offered  to  lend  them  one  ; 

and  when  at  last  they  had  to  put  the  idolatrous 

thing   on   the   fort,  they  excused   themselves   by 

saying  that  as  the  fort  belonged   to  the  king  he 

133 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

had  a  right  to  have  his  flag  there ;  but  the  rest 
of  the  colony  they  seemed  to  think  was  their 
own. 

As  early  as  1646  the  assistants  actually  de 
bated  the  question  whether  they  owed  allegiance 
to  England.  Their  conclusion  was  that  they 
could  govern  themselves  as  they  pleased,  and 
that  their  allegiance  consisted  only  in  paying  to 
England  one-fifth  of  all  the  gold  and  silver  they 
mined  and  praying  for  her  welfare. 

Besides  the  power  of  the  assistants  and  of  the 
freemen,  there  soon  grew  up  a  new  power  un 
known  to  the  charter,  composed  of  the  minis 
ters  of  the  different  congregations  ;  and  on  the 
whole  the  ministers  were  the  more  powerful, 
for  although  the  assistants  and  governor  carried 
on  the  practical  work  of  governing,  yet  they  in 
variably  took  the  advice  of  the  ministers,  and 
difficult  questions  were  referred  to  them. 

Each  minister  was  elefted  by  his  flock,  and  his 
authority  came  solely  from  the  vote  of  his  con 
gregation.  To  all  other  churches  except  the 
one  which  elected  him  he  was  a  layman.  He 
could  administer  the  communion  only  to  his  own 
congregation,  and  he  became  completely  a  lay 
man  when  he  ceased  to  be  a  minister  in  any 
particular  church. 

There  was  a  great  deal  of  work  connected 
with  a  Puritan  church,  and  at  first  each  one  had 
134 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

a  pastor  whose  duty  it  was  to  exhort,  and  a 
teacher  who  explained  doftrine  ;  but  gradually 
the  distin&ion  wore  away  and  there  were  two 
pastors,  who  were  often  called  the  elders ;  and 
besides  these  there  were  ruling  elders  and  teach 
ing  elders  who  had  charge  of  the  discipline,  and 
deacons  who  managed  the  business  affairs. 

A  minister  maintained  his  position  by  his 
talents  and  his  ability  to  please  the  people,  and 
those  people  were  not  easy  to  please.  Religion 
was  the  most  absorbing  subject  of  their  lives, 
and  they  expefted  strong  doftrine  and  strong 
reason.  They  came  to  church  provided  with 
note-books,  they  followed  the  whole  argu 
ment  of  the  sermon,  and  during  the  week  held 
meetings  to  discuss  it.  They  had  the  right  to 
interrupt  the  preacher  and  ask  him  questions. 
The  preacher  had  to  uphold  his  authority  among 
keen-minded  men  and  women  who  were  eager 
to  cross-examine  him,  and  whose  training  in 
religious  controversy  was  in  many  cases  equal  to 
his  own. 

If  a  minister  was  suspefted  of  unsoundness, 
written  questions  were  presented  to  him  and 
answers  demanded.  He  dared  not  refuse.  His 
answers  were  apt  to  draw  forth  replies ;  ex 
planations  and  counter-statements  followed  ;  the 
discussion  would  grow  intense ;  would  some 
times  spread  to  other  churches  and  sometimes 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

involve  the  whole  community.  Such  a  system 
produced  able  men,  for  a  weak  one  could  not 
exist  in  it ;  and  so  by  a  very  natural  process  the 
ministers  became  the  most  powerful  part  of  the 
Puritan  government. 

Each  church  governed  itself  to  a  great  extent ; 
but  no  church  could  be  formed  without  the 
consent  of  the  assistants  and  the  ministers ;  and 
the  assistants  and  the  legislature  as  well  as  the 
churches  could  punish  both  individuals  and 
churches  for  heresy  and  make  laws  for  their  gov 
ernment.  The  civil  punishments  for  heresy  were 
fines,  banishment,  imprisonment,  whipping,  and 
sometimes  death,  and  the  churches  could  excom 
municate,  which  was  in  effect  to  disfranchise  the 
victim  and  make  him  an  outcast.  Church  and 
state  were  one,  and  that  one  was  the  church. 

Every  one's  conduct  was  closely  watched  by 
the  elders,  and  discipline  administered  for  the 
most  trifling  offences.  Robert  Keane,  a  shop 
keeper  in  Boston,  was  brought  before  the  court 
of  assistants  because  he  charged  too  high  for  his 
goods.  They  fined  him  a  hundred  pounds  and 
were  greatly  horrified  at  his  conduct. 

A  minority  of  the  court  suggested  that  there 
was  no  law  regulating  profits,  that  it  was  common 
practice  the  world  over  to  sell  for  as  high  a  price 
as  people  would  give,  and  that  hundreds  of 
others  were  as  guilty  as  Keane.  But  it  was  of 
136 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

no  avail.  When  the  court  had  finished  with 
him  he  was  turned  over  to  the  church.  He 
knew  that  there  was  only  one  safe  course  for 
him,  and  before  both  the  court  and  the  church 
he  confessed  his  sin  and  with  many  tears  be 
wailed  his  covetous  and  corrupt  heart. 

At  every  opportunity  they  raised  some  ques 
tion  of  religion  and  discussed  it  threadbare,  and 
the  more  fine-spun  and  subtle  it  was  the  more 
it  delighted  them.  Governor  Winthrop's  jour 
nal  is  full  of  such  questions  as  whether  there 
could  be  an  indwelling  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in  a 
believer  without  a  personal  union  ;  whether  it 
was  lawful  even  to  associate  or  have  dealings 
with  idolaters  like  the  French  ;  whether  women 
should  wear  veils.  On  the  question  of  veils, 
Roger  Williams  was  in  favor  of  them ;  but  John 
Cotton  one  morning  argued  so  powerfully  on  the 
other  side  that  in  the  afternoon  the  women  all 
came  to  church  without  them. 

On  one  occasion  Governor  Winthrop  paid 
a  visit  of  state  to  Bradford,  the  governor  at 
Plymouth.  The  journey  from  Boston  to  Ply 
mouth  can  now  be  performed  within  two  hours; 
but  Winthrop  spent  two  days  on  it,  and  was 
carried  across  the  streams  on  the  shoulders  of 
Indians.  Arrived  at  Plymouth,  all  repaired  to 
church  in  the  evening,  and  a  religious  question 
was  started  in  honor  of  the  distinguished  guests. 
137 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Many  of  the  congregation  spoke  to  it,  and  then 
the  visitors  were  asked  to  speak. 

The  governors  were  usually  preachers,  and 
the  judges  preached  and  prayed  with  the  crimi 
nals.  And  such  sermons !  When  a  Puritan 
preached  he  threw  his  whole  soul  and  mind  and 
body  into  his  subjeft.  It  was  no  uncommon 
thing  for  a  man  to  preach  for  several  hours  in 
the  morning  and  have  his  congregation  return 
in  the  afternoon  to  hear  the  sermon  finished. 
Sometimes  the  sermons  were  serial.  The  min 
ister  would  take  up  a  subjeft  and  preach  on  it 
Sunday  after  Sunday  until  it  was  exhausted ;  and 
an  able  and  learned  Puritan  could  exhaust  any 
thing  except  the  patience  of  his  audience. 

Besides  the  sermons,  there  were  at  first  four 
Ie6lures  a  week  ;  but  it  was  found  that  people 
neglefted  their  affairs  to  attend  the  lectures,  and 
they  were  reduced  to  two  a  week.  Afterwards 
Thursday  was  lefture  day  for  a  great  many 
years,  and  regarded  almost  as  a  second  Sunday. 
Church  meetings  were  so  often  prolonged  far 
into  the  night  that  the  assistants  tried  to  have 
them  break  up  early,  so  that  people  who  lived 
at  a  distance  could  get  home  by  daylight.  In 
crossing  the  ocean  to  America  the  Puritans 
would  set  the  watch  with  a  psalm  and  a  prayer ; 
and  it  is  said  that  on  board  the  Griffin  there 
were  three  sermons  a  day. 
133 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Every  form  of  amusement  was  of  course  for 
bidden,  and  even  to  have  in  one's  possession  a 
pack  of  cards  or  a  set  of  dice  was  a  criminal 
offence.  They  had  no  objection  to  wine  ;  and 
in  later  colonial  times  hard  drinking  was  very 
common,  even  among  the  ministers;  but  they 
were  very  much  opposed  to  health  drinking, 
which  was  too  jovial  and  pleasant  to  suit  their 
gloomy  principles. 

Through  nearly  all  their  journals  and  writ 
ings  there  runs  a  bitter,  disappointed  tone, 
mingled  with  a  melancholy  self-righteousness. 
One  can  almost  hear  their  nasal  drawl  which 
in  England  was  so  disgusting  to  the  Royalists  and 
Cavaliers,  who  gave  them  the  name  malignants, 
which  was  in  many  respects  an  exact  description. 

In  the  Puritan  commonwealth  there  was,  of 
course,  no  freedom  of  speech.  Hugh  Bewett 
was  banished  for  maintaining  that  he  was  free 
from  original  sin,  and  that  a  true  Christian 
could,  after  a  time,  live  without  committing  sin. 
Philip  Ratcliffe  was  whipped,  fined  forty  pounds, 
banished,  and  lost  his  ears  for  uttering  what  were 
called  scandalous  speeches  against  the  govern 
ment. 

A   woman,   named    Oliver,   maintained    that 

the  magistrates  and  ministers  together   had  the 

power  to  ordain  ministers  ;  that  all  who  dwell 

in  the   same  town  and  confess  the  same   faith 

139 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

should  be  received  at  the  communion.  She 
also  defined  excommunication  in  her  own  way. 
For  these  harmless  beliefs  she  was  imprisoned. 
She  afterwards  reproached  the  assistants  and 
was  whipped.  Winthrop  remarks  that  she  stood 
without  tying  and  bore  her  punishment  with  a 
masculine  spirit.  She  also  spoke  evil  of  the 
ministers,  and  for  that  had  a  cleft  stick  put  on 
her  tongue  for  half  an  hour. 

Any  one  arriving  in  the  colony  and  suspefted 
of  false  doftrine  was  examined,  and,  if  found 
unsound,  was  banished ;  and  to  prevent  the 
secret  presence  of  heretics  there  was  a  law  for 
bidding  any  one  to  entertain  strangers  without 
permission  from  the  assistants.  Winthrop's 
Journal  and  the  court  records  are  full  of  ac 
counts  of  fines,  imprisonments,  and  whippings 
for  all  sorts  of  trifling  differences  of  opinion. 
And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  this  precaution  and 
severity,  heresy  increased.  In  1637,  only  seven 
years  after  the  arrival  of  the  Puritans,  a  con 
vention  held  at  Newtown  found  that  there  were 
in  the  colony  eighty-two  damnable  errors. 

Their  minds,  from  constantly  working  on  their 
consciences  and  exaggerating  every  subtle  thought, 
were  filled  with  gloomy  terror.  They  believed 
in  devils,  signs,  and  portents.  An  upturned 
boat,  a  chance  expression  in  a  sermon,  a  dream, 
or  any  trifling  incident  might  drive  them  into 
140 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

morbidness  and  depression.  Winthrop  tells  of 
a  man  who  cried  out  in  the  night,  "  Art  thou 
come,  Lord  Jesus  ?"  sprang  from  the  window  and 
ran  through  the  snow,  falling  on  his  knees  and 
praying  at  intervals  until  he  died. 

Other  diaries  relate  the  terrible  inward  strug 
gles  of  imaginary  guilt,  or  fear  of  damnation, 
which  many  were  fond  of  describing  at  length 
for  their  own  and  others'  edification.  We  often 
read  in  their  diaries  such  passages  as  "  Great 
dulness  and  deadness  was  in  my  heart.  I  am  in 
despair  of  my  salvation."  A  man  seized  with 
one  of  these  feelings  would  often  shut  himself 
alone  in  his  room  and  remain  for  days  battling 
with  the  demon  of  his  imagination,  and  per 
haps  come  out  with  the  resolve  that  he  would 
be  a  minister  of  the  church. 

Sewall  describes  a  large  congregation  who 
were  so  moved  by  the  preaching  of  their  min 
ister  that  they  all  cried  out,  unable  to  contain 
themselves  ;  and  his  description  of  the  troubles 
of  his  daughter  Betty  reveals  how  this  terrible 
religion  often  worked  on  the  minds  of  the 
young  : 

"  A  little  while  after  dinner  she  burst  out  into  an 
amazing  cry,  which  caused  all  the  family  to  cry  too.  Her 
mother  asked  the  reason  j  she  gave  none.  At  last  said 
she  was  afraid  she  should  goe  to  Hell  ;  her  sins  were  not 
pardoned.  She  was  first  wounded  by  my  reading  a  sermon 
141 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

of  Mr.  Norton's,  Text,  ye  shall  seek  me  and  shall  not 
find  me.  And  those  words  in  the  sermon,  ye  shall  seek 
me  and  die  in  your  sins  ran  in  her  mind  and  terrified  her 
greatly  .  .  .  told  me  she  was  afraid  she  should  go  to 
Hell,  was  like  Spira  not  elected." 

Nathaniel  Mather,  when  a  mere  boy,  wrote  in 
his  diary, — 

"  Of  the  manifold  sins  which  then  I  was  guilty  of  none 
so  sticks  upon  me  as  that  being  very  young  I  was  whitling 
on  the  Sabbath  day;  and  for  fear  of  being  seen  I  did  it  be 
hind  the  door.  A  great  reproach  of  Goa." 

This  morbid  youth,  who  in  Virginia  would 
have  been  hunting  wild  horses  and  foxes,  is  said 
to  have  prayed  in  his  sleep,  made  long  lists  of 
sins  and  things  forbidden,  "  chewed  much  on 
excellent  sermons,"  read  the  Bible,  and  "  obliged 
himself  to  fetch  a  note  and  prayer  out  of  each 
verse ;"  but  he  lived  in  the  deepest  despair, 
full  of  "  blasphemous  imaginations  and  horrible 
conceptions  of  God,"  and  died  at  the  age  of 
nineteen. 

Living  under  such  terrible  repression,  their 
human  instin6ls  sought  pleasure  in  public  con 
fessions  of  guilt  and  a  morbid  prying  into  one 
another's  consciences,  which  supplied  the  place 
of  amusements.  Adulterers  described  in  church 
before  the  congregation  all  the  details  of  their 
offence  in  a  way  which  no  doubt  brought  a  large 
audience  ;  and  confessions  of  error  in  dodlrine, 
142 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

made  with  tears  and  groanings  of  spirit,  were 
also  of  great  interest  and  satisfaction. 

A  criminal  condemned  to  execution  was  a 
choice  opportunity  that  was  never  neglected. 
The  poor  wretch  was  visited  in  his  cell  in  turn 
by  the  ministers,  who  probed  his  fears  and  con 
science  with  their  tireless  skill,  and  on  Sunday 
he  was  placed  in  the  front  seat  of  the  church 
and  preached  at  for  hours.  His  crime  was  en 
larged  upon  and  explained  and  the  dreadful  tor 
ments  that  awaited  him  in  hell  foretold. 

At  the  scaffold,  to  which  he  was  drawn  limp 
and  trembling  in  a  cart,  a  great  crowd  of  men 
and  women  was  collected,  there  were  more 
prayers  and  preaching,  and  the  prisoner  was  ex 
pected  to  break  down  and  confess  in  terror, 
while  the  women  shrieked  and  fainted. 

We  can  easily  sympathize  with  the  women 
who  in  defiance  of  public  sentiment  sometimes 
leaped  upon  the  cart  to  ride  with  the  prisoner 
to  his  awful  doom  ;  and  it  is  gratifying  to  know 
that  when  the  seven  pirates  were  executed  in 
Boston,  one  of  them  was  proof  against  all  the 
efforts  of  the  ministers, — refused  to  go  to  church, 
jumped  into  the  cart  with  a  bouquet  in  his  but 
ton-hole,  and  was  drawn  to  the  gallows  bowing 
and  smiling  at  the  crowd. 

The  Puritans'  extraordinary  system  of  govern 
ment  was  not  established  without  protest.  Many 
143 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

of  the  disfranchised  majority  were  dissatisfied 
with  their  position,  and  complaints  of  all  sorts 
were  sent  to  England.  Robert  Child  and  some 
others  ventured  to  present  a  petition  to  the 
assembly  asking  to  have  the  laws  of  England  ad 
ministered,  which  was  their  guarded  way  of 
complaining  that  none  but  church  members 
could  vote,  hold  office,  and  sit  on  juries.  They 
also  complained  that  they  were  heavily  taxed 
without  being  allowed  a  voice  in  the  government, 
and  could  not  establish  churches  of  their  own. 

Child  and  several  of  the  petitioners  were 
arrested  and  fined ;  and  when  Child  was  about 
to  leave  for  England,  his  papers  were  searched 
and  one  found  which  declared  that  the  Puritans 
had  forfeited  their  charter  and  were  guilty  of 
treason.  For  this  he  was  again  arrested  to  pre 
vent  his  return  to  England.  A  young  man 
named  Joy,  who  asked  one  of  the  marshals  if 
his  warrant  was  in  the  king's  name,  was  put  in 
irons.  But  he  understood  the  saintly  character, 
humbled  himself,  confessed  sin,  blessed  God  for 
the  irons  on  his  legs,  and  was  discharged. 

The  reason  for  this  severity  against  Child  and 
the  other  petitioners  was  that  they  were  capable 
of  arousing  the  disfranchised  majority,  which 
could  have  wrecked  the  Puritan  commonwealth 
or  have  brought  down  on  it  the  vengeance  of 
the  British  crown,  and  this  was  also  one  of  the 
144 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

principal  reasons  for  the  banishment  in  1636  of 
Roger  Williams,  who  founded  Rhode  Island. 

Williams  was  an  out-and-out  separatist,  who 
made  no  pretence  of  being  still  within  the 
Church  of  England.  He  belonged  to  the  class 
of  people  who  at  that  time  were  called  seekers. 
They  believed  that  all  church  organization  and 
government  had  been  utterly  corrupted  during 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  they  were  seeking  or  wait 
ing  for  a  new  and  true  dispensation. 

In  the  case  of  most  people  whose  minds  were 
set  free  by  the  Reformation  we  find  that  their 
ideas  very  soon  crystallized  again,  and  settled 
down  into  some  hard-and-fast  form.  This  was 
notably  true  of  the  New  England  Puritans.  But 
Roger  Williams  was  altogether  different ;  his  ideas 
always  remained  in  solution  ;  he  seemed  to  be 
attempting  to  carry  out  every  thought  that  came 
to  him.  He  was  one  of  a  small  body  of  ration 
alists  who  had  succeeded  in  getting  almost 
entirely  free  from  dogmatism. 

He  had  had  a  university  education,  and  was  a 
man  of  some  little  knowledge  in  theology,  an 
ardent  lover  of  controversy,  and  a  hard  hitter, 
with  a  good  vocabulary  of  inveftive.  He  rarely 
spoke  without  using  some  rough  words.  He 
feared  neither  the  wilderness  nor  the  Indians. 
He  made  most  praiseworthy  attempts  to  learn 
what  he  called  the  barbarous,  rocky  speech  of 

VOL.  I.— 10  145 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

the  savages  and  convert  them ;  and  he  tells  us 
of  the  wearisome  days  and  nights  he  passed  in 
their  filthy,  smoky  wigwams.  On  one  occasion 
he  went  alone  and  unarmed  among  the  Narra- 
gansett  warriors  when  they  were  on  the  war 
path,  and  persuaded  them  not  to  join  the  Pequods 
against  the  Puritans  who  had  banished  him. 

His  individuality  was  strong,  and  he  could 
endure  no  rule  or  control  but  his  own.  Some 
of  his  opinions,  especially  those  on  religious 
liberty,  were  far  in  advance  of  his  times,  and 
the  rest  were  mere  eccentricities  and  hair-split 
tings.  He  was  opposed  to  the  oath  of  allegiance, 
because  an  oath,  he  said,  was  part  of  God's  wor 
ship  and  establishment,  and  ought  not  to  be  ad 
ministered  to  any  mortal,  whether  good  or  bad. 
He  held  also  that  a  man  ought  not  to  pray  with 
the  unregenerate,  even  if  they  were  his  wife 
and  children. 

The  argument  that  was  used  to  confute  him 
on  this  point  is  a  good  illustration  of  the  close 
way  in  which  the  Puritans  reasoned  about  the 
smallest  matters : 

"  If  it  be  unlawful  to  call  an  unregenerate  person  to 
pray,  since  it  is  an  action  of  God's  worship,  then  it  is  un 
lawful  for  your  unregenerate  child  to  pray  for  a  blessing  on 
his  own  meat.  If  it  be  unlawful  for  him  to  pray  for  a 
blessing  upon  his  meat,  it  is  unlawful  for  him  to  eat  it,  for 
it  is  sanctified  by  prayer,  and  without  prayer,  unsanclified. 
(i  Tim.  iv.  4,  5.)  If  it  be  unlawful  for  him  to  eat  it,  it 
146 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

is  unlawful  for  you  to  call  upon  him  to  eat  it,  for  it  is  un 
lawful  for  you  to  call  upon  him  to  sin.  Hereupon  Mr. 
Williams  chose  to  hold  his  peace  rather  than  make  any 
answer  :  Such  the  giddiness,  the  confusion,  the  autocracy 
of  that  sectarian  spirit."  (Magnalia,  Book  7.) 

He  complained  of  the  charter  because  it  de 
scribed  King  James  as  the  first  Christian  prince 
who  had  discovered  New  England,  and  because 
it  took  the  land  from  the  Indians  without  paying 
them  for  it.  The  Puritans,  he  said,  should  all 
go  back  to  England  and  begin  over  again,  or  else 
make  a  public  acknowledgment  of  their  repent 
ance,  and  he  tried  to  have  a  letter  signed  and 
sent  to  the  king  admitting  the  wickedness  of 
the  charter. 

The  Puritans,  he  said,  should  also  make  a 
public  repentance  of  having  been  in  communion 
with  the  Church  of  England.  Their  combined 
government  of  church  and  state  was  all  wrong, 
and  confused  politics  with  religion.  Compelling 
people  to  attend  public  worship  was  a  law  to  en 
force  hypocrisy.  It  was  ridiculous  to  seleft  pub 
lic  officers  solely  from  church  members.  Would 
you,  he  said,  seleft  your  doctor  or  your  pilot  ac 
cording  to  his  theology  ?  The  captain  of  a  ship 
demands  no  compulsory  prayers  from  his  crew, 
and  yet  he  maintains  order  and  follows  his  course 
through  the  seas.  And,  finally,  he  declared  that 
it  was  wrong  to  punish  for  religious  error. 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

This  was  too  much  for  the  Puritans,  and  it  is 
rather  remarkable  that  they  endured  Williams 
long  enough  to  argue  with  him,  for  his  prin 
ciples  struck  at  the  foundation  of  their  whole 
system.  He  was  ordered  out  of  the  colony ; 
and  remaining  on  one  excuse  or  another,  they 
were  about  to  seize  him  and  send  him  back  to 
England ;  but  he  fled  away  to  Rhode  Island 
through  the  winter  snow. 

There  has  been  much  controversy  as  to  the 
exadl  reasons  for  banishing  him,  and  some 
writers  have  denied  that  it  was  for  his  belief  in 
religious  liberty.  The  colony  was  at  that  time, 
they  say,  in  danger  of  an  Indian  war,  required 
unity  among  its  people,  and  Williams  was  a  dis 
turber  of  the  peace.  No  doubt  his  arguments 
tended  to  arouse  the  disfranchised  majority,  and 
the  ministers,  fearing  this,  were  the  more  anxious 
to  banish  him.  It  is  not  likely  that  he  was 
banished  for  any  one  opinion,  but  for  all  of 
them,  and  his  advocacy  of  religious  liberty 
would  have  been  in  itself  enough. 

There  is  no  question  that  the  Puritans  were 
opposed  to  liberty  of  conscience.  Their  denial 
of  it  was  the  foundation  of  their  system.  It 
was  preached  against  in  Massachusetts  as  the 
cause  of  all  immorality,  and  nearly  every  emi 
nent  man  has  left  his  written  protest  against  it. 
It  was  called  an  evil  egg,  Satan's  plea,  hypocrisy. 
148 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Nathaniel  Ward  called  it  hell  above  ground  ;  it 
was,  he  said,  one  of  the  things  his  heart  de 
tested  ;  and  the  Puritan  oligarchy  believed  that 
its  enforcement  would  ruin  them. 

The  Puritans  had  by  no  means  accepted  all 
the  ideas  of  the  Reformation.  They  retained 
a  large  share  of  medievalism,  and  among  other 
things  the  dogma  of  exclusive  salvation.  Like 
Luther  and  Calvin,  they  still  clung  to  the  belief 
of  the  Roman  Church,  that  there  must  neces 
sarily  be  some  one  set  of  doctrines  which  would 
save  all  who  accepted  them  and  damn  all  who 
rejected  them.  After  Roger  Williams  went  to 
Rhode  Island,  John  Cotton  had  a  long  contro 
versy  with  him  on  this  question  of  toleration, 
and  the  arguments  show  how  the  men  of  that  age 
were  struggling  with  the  subject. 

Williams  cited  the  parable  of  the  tares  which 
were  allowed  to  grow  up  with  the  wheat  until 
the  harvest,  also  the  instance  where  Christ  re 
buked  his  disciples  for  suggesting  that  he  should 
call  down  fire  from  heaven  to  destroy  the 
Samaritans  who  would  not  receive  him,  and 
several  other  passages  from  Scripture  which  ap 
parently  imply  a  command  not  to  persecute. 
He  quoted  the  words  of  a  number  of  famous 
princes  and  rulers  who  had  announced  them 
selves  on  the  side  of  religious  liberty,  notably 
Stephen  of  Poland,  who  said,  "  I  am  king  of 
149 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

men,  not  of  consciences  ;  a  commander  of  bodies, 
not  of  souls." 

He  also  quoted  passages  from  the  fathers  of 
the  church, — from  Hilary,  Tertullian,  Jerome, 
Augustine,  and  several  others, — to  the  effect 
that  Christianity  should  spread  itself  by  the 
spirit  and  the  word  and  not  by  the  sword. 
The  heathen,  the  Turks,  and  the  Persians,  said 
Williams,  seldom  persecute.  He  gave  instances 
from  ancient  history  and  from  the  Old  Testa 
ment  where  men  have  tolerated  opposing  re 
ligions  ;  and  he  reminded  Cotton  that  although 
the  Indians  worshipped  devils,  the  Puritans 
never  persecuted  them,  but  reserved  their  intol 
erance  for  their  own  brethren  and  fellow-coun 
trymen. 

Cotton  astutely  replied  that  what  kings  had 
said  was  no  rule  for  the  church  of  God,  for 
kings  often  for  the  sake  of  policy  tolerated 
heresies,  and  for  every  king  Williams  could 
name  as  in  favor  of  religious  liberty  he  could 
name  a  score  who  had  put  to  death  every  heretic 
in  their  kingdoms.  The  commands  of  Christ 
to  be  gentle  and  tolerant  were  addressed  only  to 
the  disciples,  and  the  opinions  of  the  fathers  of 
the  church  referred  to  dealings  with  the  heathen 
who  had  never  enjoyed  the  light ;  but  such 
precepts  could  have  no  application  to  Christians 
who,  knowing  the  truth,  deliberately  went  astray. 
150 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

The  rulers  of  Massachusetts,  Cotton  said, 
never  punished  the  Indians,  who  had  been  born 
in  darkness  and  ignorance,  for  not  accepting 
Christianity.  They  punished  only  those  who, 
having  been  enlightened,  sinned  against  what 
they  knew  to  be  true  ;  and  they  always  warned 
them  of  their  error  before  the  punishment  was 
inflifted.  If,  after  fair  warning,  they  still  per 
sisted,  their  punishment  could  not  be  called 
persecution  for  conscience'  sake,  but  for  sinning 
against  conscience. 

These  arguments  of  Cotton  seem  now  absurd 
enough  ;  but  at  that  time  they  were  accepted 
not  merely  by  the  fanatical  and  cruel,  but  by 
tender  women,  magnanimous  men,  the  senti 
mental  and  the  timid  as  well  as  the  strong. 
To  the  people  of  that  age,  living  under  the 
dominion  of  the  doctrine  of  exclusive  salvation, 
a  man  who  would  dare  deny  the  truth  of  a  sys 
tem  which  alone  could  save  the  soul,  a  man  who 
would  dare  to  lead  others  from  that  system  and 
thus  insure  their  everlasting  torment  in  hell, 
could  not  be  honest  and  sincere ;  he  was  a 
pest,  a  danger  which  must  be  hunted  down  and 
stamped  out  as  if  he  were  a  wolf  or  a  snake. 

The  belief  in  religious  liberty  advanced  during 
the  Reformation  in  exa6l  proportion  as  the  be 
lief  in  the  doctrine  of  exclusive  salvation  was 
weakened,  because  men  who  really  and  thor- 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

oughly  believe  in  exclusive  salvation  must  neces 
sarily  persecute  those  who  do  not,  and  it  is 
their  evident  duty  to  persecute  them. 

We  can  scarcely  realize  now  what  the  old 
belief  in  exclusive  salvation  really  was;  but  in 
the  Middle  Ages  men  accepted  it  not  only  as  a 
belief  but  as  a  faft,  just  as  to-day  we  know  that 
the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow  and  are  willing  to 
risk  our  lives  or  fortunes  on  that  event.  Wil 
liams,  having  lost  faith  in  every  form  of  religion 
of  his  age,  and  believing  the  ordinances  of  every 
church  to  be  invalid,  had  necessarily  no  confi 
dence  in  the  doftrine  of  exclusive  salvation, 
and  hence  his  belief  in  religious  liberty. 

He  had  hardly  been  in  banishment  a  year 
before  the  colony  began  to  be  troubled  by  the 
prominence  of  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson.  She 
was  the  sort  of  woman  who  would  now  be  very 
welcome  and  popular  in  Massachusetts ;  but, 
unfortunately,  she  appeared  about  two  hundred 
years  before  that  good  State  was  ready  to  receive 
her.  She  was  a  person  of  energy,  force  of 
character,  and  must  have  been  possessed  of  con 
siderable  accomplishment  and  charm  ;  but  it  is 
not  probable  that  she  was  handsome,  or  it  would 
have  been  mentioned  in  some  of  the  writings  of 
the  time  as  one  of  the  marks  of  Satan. 

Like  Roger  Williams  and  many  others  who 
annoyed  the  Puritans,  she  led  a  life  of  righteous- 
152 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

ness  and  good  deeds,  and  this  her  worst  enemies 
have  never  denied  or  questioned.  She  exerted 
herself  chiefly  in  caring  for  her  own  sex  in  sick 
ness  and  in  childbirth  ;  and  it  is  probable  that  she 
made  use  of  these  occasions  for  inculcating  her 
religious  opinions.  She  took  advantage  of  the 
weekly  meetings  for  discussion  held  by  the  men, 
and  persuaded  the  women  of  Boston  to  hold 
similar  meetings  of  their  own,  a  praftice  which 
they  have  not  entirely  forgotten. 

Mrs.  Hutchinson's  heresy  consisted  in  a  per 
version  of  the  doftrine  of  justification  by  faith. 
She  held  that  the  fadl:  of  justification  was  known 
by  an  inward  feeling  and  not  by  works.  She 
was  called  an  Antinomian, — a  very  terrible  word 
in  those  days,  like  infidel  in  later  times.  It 
described  those  who  trusted  to  their  own  mind 
and  intention  and  were  more  or  less  independent 
of  regularly  organized  churches  and  works,  as 
they  were  called,  which  among  the  Puritans  in 
cluded  sanctimonious  speech,  sour  looks,  groans 
and  reproaches,  and  an  austere  routine  of  life. 

Good  works,  Mrs.  Hutchinson  said,  were 
often  the  result  of  justification  ;  but  the  inward 
feeling  of  comfort  and  assurance  was  the  es 
sential  and  only  true  proof,  while  forms  and 
observances  were  not  only  unimportant  but 
likely  to  mislead.  In  other  words,  she  was 
drifting  towards  the  doctrine  of  the  inward 
153 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

light  afterwards  adopted  by  the  Quakers,  and 
her  reliance  on  individual  feeling  and  intuition 
was  very  much  like  the  foundation  principle  of 
the  transcendental  school  of  Emerson  which  two 
hundred  years  afterwards  appeared  in  Boston. 

But  the  rulers  of  Massachusetts  in  the  year 
1637  did  not  want  any  light  of  this  sort,  for  a 
person  who  relied  on  this  inward  feeling  might 
come  to  believe  anything.  His  conscience 
might  some  day  tell  him  that  it  was  wrong  for 
the  civil  magistrate  to  punish  for  heresy,  and 
that  the  Puritan  combination  of  church  and  state 
was  unsound. 

But  in  spite  of  Puritan  opinion  this  woman's 
doftrine,  which  has  in  all  ages  fascinated  and 
comforted' millions,  began  to  run  riot  in  the 
colony.  It  started  with  the  women,  but  soon 
spread  to  the  men.  She  was  a  far  more  dan 
gerous'  heretic  than  Roger  Williams.  He  had 
formed  no  party,  and  had  had  scarcely  ten  fol 
lowers.  But  the  American  Jezebel,  as  she  was 
called,  won  to  her  side  nearly  every  member  of 
the  church  of  Boston,  young  .Henry  Vane,  who 
was  then  governor  of  the  colony,  and  many  of 
the  leading  ministers. 

Massachusetts  was  divided  into  two  parties, 

the    party    of   the    covenant    of  works   and    the 

party    of  the    covenant    of  grace.      The    grace 

party   were   most   numerous   in   Boston,   where 

154 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Mrs.   Hutchinson  lived,  but  the  smaller  towns 
and  the  country  at  large  held  to  the  old  belief. 

The  controversy  grew  bitter  and  divided 
families  ;  the  children  in  the  streets  took  sides 
and  quarrelled  with  one  another ;  people  went 
about  from  church  to  church  to  listen  to  the 
ministers  and  report  their  leaning,  and  after 
the  sermon  was  finished  these  inspectors  would 
often  rise  up  and  ask  questions.  The  men  of 
Boston  who  had  acquired  the  new  light  were  so 
much  in  earnest  that  they  refused  to  march 
against  the  Pequods  because  the  chaplain  of  the 
expedition  was  tainted  with  a  covenant  of 
works. 

Wheelwright,  the  most  prominent  of  the 
ministers  on  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  side,  was  tried 
and  banished.  Cotton  was  suspefted  and  was 
more  than  half  guilty.  Mrs.  Hutchinson  always 
expressed  great  admiration  for  him,  and  declared 
that  she  had  followed  him  to  the  colony  to  be 
under  his  preaching.  He  managed,  however, 
to  twist  himself  out  of  the  difficulty.  He  com 
plained  that  he  had  been  grossly  slandered,  and 
that  his  enemies  had  drawn  from  his  words  in 
ferences  which  he  never  intended.  It  is  hard 
to  tell  exaftly  what  he  believed ;  but  he  prob 
ably  held  that  the  inward  feeling  and  the  good 
works  were  both  necessary,  and  this  shade  of 
difference  saved  him. 

155 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

But  it  is  useless  to  follow  all  the  disputes 
and  refinements  of  the  excitement,  for  the 
ministers  got  Mrs.  Hutchinson  before  them  and 
began  to  badger  and  probe.  She  was  singularly 
astute  in  evading  them,  and  when  they  asked  her 
if  she  was  not  a  very  seditious  and  unruly 
woman,  promptly  replied  that  if  they  had  any 
charges  to  make  against  her  they  must  prove 
them.  Winthrop  was  finally  driven  to  exclaim 
that  they  knew  perfectly  well  what  her  opinions 
were,  although  they  could  not  catch  her  in 
them,  and  one  of  the  court  expressed  a  fear  that 
they  would  starve  to  death  before  they  could 
finish  with  the  lady. 

But  at  last,  to  their  unspeakable  delight,  the 
viftim  admitted  in  an  unguarded  moment  that 
she  had  revelations  and  believed  in  them.  Even 
this  was  rendered  a  little  obscure  by  Cotton,  who 
suggested  that  some  revelations  could  be  orthodox 
and  according  to  the  word.  But  the  majority  of 
the  court  understood  her  to  mean  that  she  had 
inspirations  and  an  individual  light  independent 
of  the  churches ;  and  this  was  enough.  Indi 
vidual  revelations  were  a  terrible  heresy ;  for, 
said  the  Puritans,  they  might  lead  a  person  any 
where. 

When  the  court  had  finished  with  her  she  was 
placed  in  charge  of  Welde  for  the  winter.  At 
his  house  she  remained  for  three  or  four  months, 
156 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

resorted  to  by  many  of  the  people  and  carefully 
cross-examined  by  the  ministers,  who  took  notes 
of  her  answers.  Finally,  when  spring  was  near 
at  hand,  the  ministers  announced  that  they  had 
entangled  her  in  twenty-nine  errors,  and  these 
errors  were  made  the  basis  of  her  trial  by  the 
church. 

She  held  her  own  so  well  in  this  trial  that  she 
was  taken  to  Cotton's  house,  where  she  remained 
a  week,  again  beset  and  pried  into.  This  time 
they  were  successful,  and  she  appeared  at  her 
second  church  trial  completely  broken  down, 
admitted  her  errors,  and  made  one  of  the  regu 
lation  confessions  of  sin. 

For  a  long  time  she  had  supplied  the  lack  of 
theatre,  ball-room,  and  horse-race,  and  the  min 
isters  had  taken  as  great  a  satisfaction  in  her 
trial  as  the  Virginians  in  a  bull-baiting  or  a 
cock-fight.  She  was  excommunicated  and  ban 
ished,  and  her  followers  banished  or  disfran 
chised,  disarmed,  and  fined. 

This  severity  was  necessary,  for  the  Anti- 
nomians  were  so  numerous  that  at  one  election 
they  had  almost  got  possession  of  the  govern 
ment.  But  they  were  most  thoroughly  stamped 
out,  some  of  the  women  among  them  accused  of 
having  given  birth  to  monsters,  and  their  reputa 
tions  vilified. 

Mrs.  Hutchinson  went  to  Rhode  Island  and 
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Puritans  and  Philosophy 

afterwards  moved  near  New  York,  where  she 
and  nearly  her  whole  family  were  massacred 
by  the  Indians,  the  just  vengeance  of  God,  as 
Winthrop  said,  for  her  heresies.  But  one  of  her 
descendants  lived  to  be  the  royal  governor  of 
Massachusetts  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution. 

Twenty  years  after  the  Antinomians  had  been 
disposed  of  the  Puritans  were  compelled  to  face 
a  still  greater  evil.  The  Quakers  became  a  dis- 
tincl  seel:  about  the  year  1650,  and  soon  after 
began  to  appear  in  Massachusetts.  If  there  was 
anything  that  the  aggressive,  fighting,  learned, 
intolerant  Puritan  detested  it  was  a  Quaker  with 
his  ways  of  peace,  his  devotion  to  religious 
liberty,  and  his  indifference  to  learning  as  an 
essential  of  religion  ;  and  yet  the  men  of  war 
who  had  withstood  the  Antinomians  and  Roger 
Williams  and  driven  them  from  the  province 
found  themselves  powerless  against  this  new 
form  of  meekness. 

The  first  Quakers  who  arrived  in  Massachu 
setts  were  two  women,  who  were  imprisoned, 
starved,  stripped  naked  and  searched  for  witch- 
marks,  and  finally  banished  to  the  Barbadoes. 

Other  arrivals  were  treated  with  similar  se 
verity,  and  a  fine  of  a  hundred  pounds  was 
inflicted  for  bringing  a  Quaker  within  the  juris 
diction.  If  a  Quaker  returned  to  the  colony 
after  having  been  banished,  he  should  for  the 
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Puritans  and  Philosophy 

first  offence  lose  one  of  his  ears,  and  for  the 
second  offence  his  other  ear ;  a  woman  was  to 
be  whipped  for  both  offences  ;  and  for  a  third 
offence  the  culprit,  whether  man  or  woman,  was 
to  have  the  tongue  bored  through  with  a  red-hot 
iron.  Under  this  law  no  one  had  his  tongue 
bored,  but  three  Quakers  lost  their  ears ;  and 
another  law  was  soon  passed  which  inflicled  the 
penalty  of  death  if  a  Quaker  returned  from 
banishment. 

Under  this  law  four  of  the  se6l  were  hung. 
One  of  them  was  a  woman,  Mary  Dyer,  who 
some  years  before  had  been  a  follower  of  Mrs. 
Hutchinson,  and  having  settled  in  Rhode  Island, 
had,  like  many  of  the  Antinomians,  become  a 
Quaker. 

Returning  to  Boston  as  a  preacher  of  her  new 
faith,  she  was  banished,  and  when  she  appeared 
again  was  led  out  with  due  formality  to  the  gal 
lows  and  the  halter  put  round  her  neck  ;  but  at 
the  last  moment  she  was  pardoned  at  the  inter 
cession  of  her  son.  She  went  back  to  Rhode 
Island,  but  was  dissatisfied.  She  felt  that  she 
had  adled  a  weak  part ;  and,  without  the  knowl 
edge  of  her  husband,  William  Dyer,  a  very 
prominent  man  in  the  Rhode  Island  colony,  she 
came  again  to  Boston,  and  this  time  the  saints 
succeeded  in  strangling  her. 

These  persecutions  of  the  Quakers  were  in- 
'59 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

flifted  by  a  minority  of  the  colony.  Even  in 
the  House  of  Deputies,  where  the  feelings  of 
the  dominant  party  were  very  strong,  the  law 
punishing  the  Quakers  with  death  was  passed  by 
a  majority  of  only  one  vote.  If  Massachusetts 
had  had  universal  suffrage,  like  Virginia,  we 
should  never  have  heard  of  the  Quaker  massacre. 
But  the  General  Court,  headed  by  Governor 
Endicott  and  the  ministers  under  the  lead  of 
John  Norton,  held  the  power  and  did  what  they 
pleased. 

When  the  Quakers  were  executed,  great  pre 
cautions  had  to  be  taken  to  prevent  an  uprising 
of  the  community  and  a  rescue.  After  the  exe 
cution  of  Mary  Dyer  there  was  great  indignation, 
with  many  threats  of  violence.  The  victims 
were  always  marched  to  the  gallows  surrounded 
by  soldiers,  and  when  they  attempted  to  speak 
their  voices  were  drowned  by  the  beat  of  drums. 

Armed  men  were  stationed  in  different  parts 
of  the  town  to  guard  against  a  surprise ;  the 
church  members  were  kept  up  to  the  killing 
mark  by  fiery  sermons  on  the  passages  from  the 
Old  Testament  that  justified  killing  unbelievers, 
and  the  argument  was  freely  used  that  as  it 
would  be  lawful  to  slay  a  man  who  brought  into 
the  town  a  pestilence  which  destroyed  the  body, 
how  much  more  for  a  pestilence  that  destroyed 
the  soul ! 

160 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

The  hanging  business  was  soon  found  to  have 
been  overdone,  for  the  indignation  against  it 
became  very  great,  and  in  place  of  it  a  law  was 
passed  by  which  Quakers  were  to  be  stripped 
to  the  waist  and  whipped  at  the  cart's  tail 
through  every  town  until  they  reached  the  bor 
der.  Thirty  men  and  women  were  whipped 
under  this  law  by  sentence  of  the  General 
Court,  and  a  much  larger  number  by  sentence 
of  the  county  courts.  An  Indian,  to  whose 
wigwam  a  banished  Quaker  fled,  exclaimed, 
"  What  a  God  have  the  English  !" 

The  Antinomian  difficulty  had  been  disposed 
of  within  a  year,  but  this  contest  with  the 
Quakers  was  war  to  the  death,  and  extended 
over  a  period  of  ten  years.  The  Quakers  be 
came  very  numerous,  and  a  large  part  of  them 
were  converted  Puritans.  Whittier,  the  poet, 
was  a  descendant  of  one  of  these  Puritans  con 
verted  to  the  way  of  peace. 

They  were  so  fearless  and  persistent  that  they 
wore  out  the  endurance  of  the  ministers,  and 
finally  were  let  alone.  They  lived  at  peace 
side  by  side  with  their  enemies,  and  that  was 
the  last  of  religious  persecution  in  New  England. 
The  meek  Quaker  had  triumphantly  enforced 
his  lesson  of  religious  liberty,  and  the  funda 
mental  principle  of  the  Puritan  commonwealth 
was  destroyed. 

VOL.  I.— u  161 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Another  blow  soon  followed.  Massachusetts, 
as  we  have  seen,  was  in  effeft  almost  independent 
of  Great  Britain,  and  up  to  the  time  of  the 
Quaker  massacre  the  condition  of  things  in  Eng 
land  was  favorable  to  the  colonists.  From  the 
founding  of  the  second  colony  in  1630  until  the 
restoration  of  Charles  II.  in  1660,  England  was 
struggling  with  her  great  revolution.  The  mo 
mentous  events  which  occupied  the  attention  of 
Charles  I.  and  of  Cromwell  gave  them  no  time 
to  consider  the  affairs  of  a  little  colony  three 
thousand  miles  away,  and  Cromwell,  being  him 
self  a  Puritan,  was  favorably  inclined  towards 
Massachusetts.  But  her  independent  attitude 
was  well  known,  and  repeated  demands  were 
made  for  the  surrender  of  her  liberal  charter 
that  it  might  be  cancelled.  At  last  the  restora 
tion  came,  and  when  Charles  II.  mounted  the 
throne  the  Puritans,  foreseeing  their  doom,  held 
days  of  fasting  and  prayer. 

Charles  demanded  that  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  should  be  permitted  to  those  who  de 
sired  it,  that  the  religious  test  for  the  right  to 
vote  should  be  abolished,  and  that  writs  should 
run  in  the  king's  name.  As  the  last  require 
ment  was  a  mere  formality,  the  Puritans  adopted 
it  and  disregarded  all  the  others.  Proceedings 
were  begun  to  forfeit  the  charter,  and,  although 
they  were  delayed  for  many  years,  the  end  came 
162 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

in  1684,  when  the  charter  was  cancelled,  and 
Massachusetts  became  a  royal  province  under 
the  direct  rule  of  the  king. 

Sir  Edmund  Andros,  who  came  out  as  the 
royal  governor,  ruled  the  colony  as  he  pleased, 
seized  the  Old  South  Church  for  Church  of 
England  services,  compelled  land-owners  to  take 
out  new  patents  and  pay  new  fees,  and  with  the 
aid  of  his  council  levied  taxes  as  he  thought 
proper.  After  four  years  of  this  rule,  when 
William  of  Orange  landed  in  England  to  drive 
James  II.  from  the  throne,  the  Puritans  seized 
the  opportunity  to  rebel.  They  rose  almost  as 
one  man,  seized  Andros  and  his  officers,  sent 
them  back  to  England,  and  took  possession  of 
the  colonial  government  for  themselves. 

They  sent  agents  to  England  to  obtain  a 
favorable  charter  from  William  ;  but  the  charter 
he  finally  granted  abolished  the  religious  restraint 
on  the  suffrage,  and  gave  the  right  to  vote  to 
every  inhabitant  who  had  property  above  a  cer 
tain  value.  This  alone  was  enough  to  destroy 
the  Puritan  oligarchy. 

But  the  charter  went  further,  and  abolished 
every  principle  that  was  dear  to  the  Puritan 
heart.  Liberty  of  conscience  was  given  to  all 
but  Papists,  appeals  to  England  were  allowed,  and 
the  oath  of  allegiance  to  Massachusetts  was  done 
away  with  and  the  English  oath  put  in  its  place. 
163 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

By  this  charter  the  Plymouth  colony  was  ab 
sorbed  into  Massachusetts,  and  she  was  also 
given  Maine  and  Nova  Scotia  as  part  of  her 
territory.  Each  one  of  these  districts  was  to 
be  represented  in  the  upper  house  of  her  legis 
lature  very  much  as  the  States  of  the  Union 
are  now  represented  in  the  Senate.^  The 
governor  was  appointed  by  the  king ;  he  could 
assemble  the  assistants  at  his  pleasure,  and  could 
at  his  pleasure  dissolve  the  General  Court ; 
he  had  the  right  of  veto  on  every  law,  and  the 
king  also  had  the  right  of  veto  at  any  time 
within  three  years  after  the  passage  of  a  law. 
From  this  time  until  the  Revolution  Massa 
chusetts  was  held  down  with  an  iron  hand. 

The  attempt  to  establish  extreme  Puritanism 
in  a  colony  ruling  itself  without  interference 
from  England  had  been  moderately  successful 
for  about  fifty  years,  which  forms  the  first 
period  of  Massachusetts  history.  In  the  next 
period,  from  about  1680  until  the  Revolu 
tion  of  1776,  we  find  the  power  of  the  min 
isters  gradually  declining,  and  Puritanism  be 
coming  less  and  less  peculiar  and  intolerant. 
But  in  the  beginning  of  this  period  occurred 
a  last  outburst  of  some  of  the  most  peculiar 
characteristics  of  Puritanism,  and  a  frantic  at- 


*  Evolution  of  the  Constitution,  pp.  63,  125. 
164 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

tempt  of  the  ministers  to  regain  their  waning 
power,  which  is  known  as  the  Salem  Witchcraft. 

The  Puritans  were  extremely  superstitious, 
and  still  held  to  the  old  mediaeval  belief  in 
devils  and  evil  spirits.  As  their  religion  taught 
them  to  see  in  human  nature  only  depravity  and 
corruption,  so  in  the  outward  nature  by  which 
they  were  surrounded  they  saw  forewarnings  and 
signs  of  doom  and  dread.  Where  the  modern 
mind  now  refreshes  itself  in  New  England  with 
the  beauties  of  the  sea-shore,  the  forest,  and 
the  sunset,  the  Puritan  saw  only  threatenings 
of  terror.  The  Greek  gave  every  stream  and 
mountain  its  graceful  god  or  nymph  who  took  a 
kindly  interest  in  mankind,  but  the  Puritan's 
imagination  peopled  every  aspecl  of  nature  with 
his  deadly  enemy  the  devil. 

Such  people  were  in  a  state  of  mind  to  receive 
any  strange  delusion,  and  one  of  the  worst  delu 
sions  of  those  days  was  a  belief  in  witchcraft, 
which  at  that  time  had  begun  to  be  doubted  ; 
but  there  was  still  enough  of  it  in  the  air  to 
infeft  the  Puritans. 

In  former  times  no  se6l  of  religion  and  no 
class  of  life  had  been  free  from  it,  more  than 
four  thousand  books  had  been  written  about  it, 
it  had  assailed  the  highest  intellects  as  well  as 
the  lowest,  and  Sprenger  estimates  that  in  the 
fifteenth  century  one  hundred  thousand  persons 
165 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

were  executed  for  it  in  Germany  alone,  and 
that  during  the  Christian  epoch  nine  million 
men  and  women  had  been  put  to  death  for  this 
supposed  crime.  Those  who  doubted  were 
reminded  of  the  witch  of  Endor  in  the  Old  Tes 
tament  and  of  the  laws  of  Moses  against  witch 
craft.  In  the  books  of  the  Middle  Ages  it  is 
asserted  over  and  over  again  that  to  doubt  the 
existence  of  witchcraft  is  to  deny  the  Holy 
Scriptures  and  to  refuse  confidence  in  the  gen 
eral  belief  of  all  mankind. 

The  belief  in  witchcraft  might  have  lain  dor 
mant  in  Massachusetts,  and  not  resulted  in  the 
killing  of  witches,  but  for  Cotton  Mather  and 
the  ministers,  who  saw  an  opportunity  to  regain 
their  importance  by  arousing  it. 

Cotton  Mather  was  the  son  of  Increase 
Mather,  and  on  his  mother's  side  was  descended 
from  John  Cotton,*  who  had  been  the  leading 
minister  of  the  colony,  long  and  minute  in 

*  When  Cotton  Mather  was  graduated  at  Harvard, 
President  Oakes,  in  his  Latin  oration,  said,  "  Mather  is 
named  Cotton  Mather.  What  a  name  !  But,  my  hear 
ers,  I  confess  I  am  wrong ;  I  should  have  said,  What 
names  !  I  shall  say  nothing  of  his  reverend  father,  since  I 
dare  not  praise  him  to  his  face  5  but  should  he  resemble 
and  represent  his  venerable  grandfathers,  John  Cotton  and 
Richard  Mather,  in  piety,  learning,  elegance  of  mind,  solid 
judgment,  prudence,  and  wisdom,  he  will  bear  away  the 
palm."  (Sparks,  vi.  p.  172.) 
1 66 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

preaching,  and  humble  in  confessing  his  errors 
when  the  cross-examination  of  a'n  opponent 
or  a  congregation  drove  him  to  the  wall.  It 
was  he  who,  when  asked  why  he  indulged  in 
nocturnal  studies,  replied  that  before  he  went  to 
sleep  he  liked  to  sweeten  his  mouth  with  a  piece 
of  Calvin, — a  rather  hot  morsel,  as  Dr.  Holmes 
has  said.  One  of  his  best-known  books  was 
called  "  Spiritual  Milk  for  Babes,  Drawn  out 
of  the  Breasts  of  both  Testaments,  for  their 
Souls'  Comfort  and  of  Great  Use  for  Children." 

Cotton  Mather,  the  final  result  of  these  two 
generations  of  Puritanism,  was  himself  even 
more  than  an  epitome  of  Puritanism,  for  he  was 
Puritanism  gone  mad.  Ingenious  and  learned, 
with  boundless  industry,  able  to  labor  sixteen 
hours  of  the  twenty-four ;  the  author  of  three 
hundred  and  eighty-two  books,  written  with  all 
the  fulsomeness,  unftion,  and  cant  of  his  faith  ; 
superstitious,  vain,  and  arrogant,  he  was  the  most 
conspicuous  figure  of  his  time  in  New  England. 
He  fasted  for  days  at  a  time ;  he  would  lie  flat 
on  his  face  for  hours  on  the  floor  of  his  study, 
praying  and  waiting  for  intimations  and  voices 
from  heaven. 

In  order  to  stimulate  the  belief  in  witchcraft 

he  related  instances  of  it  which  he  professed  to 

consider   well    authenticated.     A    woman   with 

her  husband    going  over  the  river  in  a  canoe, 

167 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

they  saw  the  head  of  a  man,  and  about  three 
feet  off  the  tail  of  a  cat,  swimming  before  the 
canoe,  but  no  body  to  join  them.  A  long  staff 
danced  up  and  down  in  the  chimney,  and  after 
wards  was  hung  by  a  line  and  swung  to  and  fro. 
A  chair  flew  about  the  room  until  it  lit  upon 
the  table  where  the  meat  stood.  A  man  was 
taken  out  of  his  bed  and  thrown  under  it,  and 
all  the  knives  in  the  house,  one  after  another, 
stuck  into  his  back,  which  the  spectators  pulled 
out;  but  one  of  them  seemed  to  the  spectators 
to  come  out  of  his  mouth. 

In  this  way  Mather  and  the  ministers  excited 
minds  already  terrorized  by  a  belief  in  the  con 
stant  presence  of  the  devil  and  his  angels,  which 
had  been  dinned  into  their  ears  in  every  imagi 
nable  form  from  childhood.  They  were  soon 
ready  to  see  anything  and  believe  anything  :  the 
yellow  bird  that  lit  on  men's  hats,  the  black 
man  that  whispered  in  their  ears,  the  riding  on 
sticks  through  the  air,  the  written  contracts  with 
the  devil,  the  signing  of  his  book,  and  the  feasts 
of  the  devil  with  the  witches,  where  the  sac 
raments  of  the  church  were  blasphemously  imi 
tated. 

The  ministers  soon  had  the  opportunity  they 
wanted.  In  the  year  1688  two  girls  about  thir 
teen  years  old  began  to  mew  like  cats,  bark  like 
dogs,  pretend  to  lose  their  hearing  and  sight, 
1 68 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

scream  when  rebuked  by  their  parents,  and  went 
through  other  performances  of  strange  postures 
for  which  they  should  have  been  whipped. 
After  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer  they  were  pro 
nounced  bewitched,  and  a  poor  washerwoman 
with  whom  they  had  quarrelled  was  hung. 

Cotton  Mather  took  one  of  the  girls  to  his 
home  to  study  her  at  leisure,  and  she  made  a 
complete  fool  of  him, — stopped  her  ears  when 
he  prayed,  refused  to  read  the  Bible  or  any 
Puritan  book,  but  took  great  delight  in  a  jest 
book,  Popish  books,  and  in  the  Church  of  Eng 
land  Prayer-Book.  She  also  cleverly  told  him 
that  Satan  dreaded  him,  and  that  when  he  prayed 
the  devils  made  her  kick  and  sing  and  yell. 

Mather  and  the  other  ministers  now  began  to 
write  and  circulate  pamphlets  on  the  subject, 
and  in  about  four  years  the  minds  of  all  the 
people  were  so  wrought  upon  that  the  slaughter 
began. 

Informers  swarmed.  No  one  was  safe ;  the 
slightest  peculiarity  in  manner,  or  an  obscure 
chance  remark  that  could  be  given  a  double 
meaning,  was  enough  to  secure  a  conviftion. 
Many  who  had  lost  some  household  article  or 
cattle,  or  who  had  suffered  a  misfortune  or  sick 
ness,  were  allowed  to  relate  their  trouble  before 
the  court  as  evidence  that  one  of  their  neigh 
bors  had  bewitched  them.  The  evidence  against 
169 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

a  minister  named  Burroughs  was  that  he  could 
lift  up  a  barrel  of  molasses  by  the  bung-hole, 
and  hold  a  heavy  gun  at  arm's  length  with  his 
fingers  in  the  muzzle. 

Even  in  this  awful  delusion  the  Puritan  mind 
still  worked  by  its  close  reasoning  processes. 
The  few  who  were  opposed  to  punishing  for 
witchcraft  argued  that  it  might  be  possible  for  a 
devil  to  get  into  a  person  and  make  a  witch  of 
him  against  his  will.  In  punishing  witchcraft 
there  was  therefore  great  danger  of  punishing 
the  innocent.  If  an  ordinary  man,  they  said, 
does  anything  supernatural,  it  must  be  by  aid  of 
the  devil.  Those  that  are  possessed  are  there 
fore  bad  witnesses,  both  against  themselves  and 
against  others,  because  it  is  making  a  witness  of 
the  devil,  who  is  well  known  to  be  a  liar.  If 
they  testify  as  witches,  all  that  they  know  must 
come  from  the  devil,  and  if  the  root  of  their 
knowledge  be  the  devil,  what  must  their  testi 
mony  be  ? 

But  these  arguments  were  of  little  avail. 
When  a  person  was  accused,  his  only  hope  of 
escape  was  in  confession,  and  this  process  manu 
factured  witches  very  fast.  Children  clung  to 
their  mother  and  begged  her  to  confess  and  re 
turn  to  them  ;  wives  besought  their  husbands  to 
confess  and  not  desolate  their  home.  Many 
escaped  by  confessing,  and  years  afterwards  the 
170 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

courts  and  the  churches  began  to  receive  written 
retractions  of  these  confessions  which  can  be 
read  to-day.  Sad  reading  they  are  ;  but  along 
with  them  are  papers  which  are  sadder  still  ; 
these  are  the  confessions  of  witnesses  who  by 
their  lies  and  spite  had  caused  the  death  of  their 
neighbors. 

Giles  Corey  was  at  that  time  eighty  years  of 
age.  When  accused  of  witchcraft,  he  would 
neither  confess  nor  plead  to  the  indiftment.  He 
knew  himself  to  be  innocent,  and  he  despised  a 
false  confession.  By  the  old  English  law  a 
prisoner  who  refused  to  plead  was  pressed  to 
death  with  weights.  The  Puritans  were  not 
much  given  to  following  the  law  of  England ; 
but  this  law  they  thought  exaftly  suited  Giles 
Corey's  case,  and  accordingly  the  old  man  had 
rocks  piled  upon  his  stomach  until  he  died. 
He  begged  his  tormenters  to  increase  the  weight 
rapidly  and  end  his  misery,  for  there  was,  he 
assured  them,  no  chance  of  changing  his  mind. 
When  the  weight  forced  his  tongue  from  his 
mouth  an  attendant  pushed  it  back  with  a  cane. 

The  killing  time  lasted  about  four  months, 
from  the  first  of  June  to  the  end  of  September, 
1692,  and  then  a  reaftion  came  because  the  in 
formers  began  to  strike  at  important  persons,  and 
named  the  wife  of  the  governor.  Twenty 
persons  had  been  put  to  death,  fifty  had  confessed 
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Puritans  and  Philosophy 

and  escaped,  one  hundred  and  fifty  were  in 
prison  waiting  trial,  and  about  two  hundred  more 
stood  accused ;  and  if  the  delusion  had  lasted 
much  longer,  under  the  rules  of  evidence  that 
were  adopted,  everybody  in  the  colony  except 
the  magistrates  and  ministers  would  have  been 
either  hung  or  would  have  stood  charged  with 
witchcraft. 

In  a  short  time  all  the  people  recovered  from 
their  madness,  admitted  their  error,  and  laws  were 
passed  to  prevent  the  recurrence  of  such  a  craze 
and  to  make  some  amends  to  the  families  of  the 
victims.  In  1697  the  General  Court  ordered  a 
day  of  fasting  and  prayer  for  what  had  been  done 
amiss  in  "  the  late  tragedy  raised  among  us  by 
Satan."  Satan  was  the  scapegoat,  and  nothing 
was  said  about  the  designs  and  motives  of  the 
ministers. 

Among  the  few  who  would  not  admit  that  they 
had  been  wrong  were  Cotton  Mather,  Parris, 
one  of  the  ministers,  and  Stoughton,  the  chief- 
justice.  Stoughton  was  so  disgusted  when  he 
found  that  no  more  witches  could  be  hung  that 
he  resigned  from  the  court.  Mather  attempted 
to  arouse  the  delusion  again,  and  made  public  a 
story  of  a  woman  who  could  suspend  herself  in 
mid-air  so  that  a  strong  man  could  not  pull  her 
down.  But  the  time  had  passed,  his  reputation 
suffered,  and  he  never  again  regained  the  respect 
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Puritans  and  Philosophy 

of  the  people.  Parris,  for  a  similar  attempt,  was 
dismissed  by  his  congregation,  and  could  never 
after  obtain  employment  as  a  minister. 

After  the  witchcraft  delusion  had  subsided, 
Puritanism  steadily  declined  for  the  next  hun 
dred  years ;  and  Sewall,  one  of  the  judges  who 
had  taken  part  in  many  of  the  witchcraft  trials, 
has  left  us  a  most  voluminous  diary  which  gives 
valuable  glimpses  of  Puritan  life  about  the  year 
1700. 

Sewall  was  very  fond  of  going  to  funerals,  to 
which  people  were  invited  in  both  England  and 
some  of  the  colonies  by  having  a  mourning  scarf, 
a  pair  of  gloves,  or  a  ring  sent  to  them.  He  was 
very  proud  of  the  rings  and  gloves  he  received 
in  this  way,  and  kept  lists  of  them.  When  a 
funeral  took  place  and  no  gloves  or  ring  were 
received,  he  was  much  mortified ;  but,  on  the 
whole,  he  seems  to  have  been  in  demand  for  these 
truly  Puritan  entertainments,  which  in  time  were 
carried  to  such  excess,  and  were  accompanied  by 
so  much  drinking,  that  a  law  had  to  be  passed  to 
check  the  extravagance. 

These  funeral  excesses  seem  to  have  pre 
vailed  only  in  the  colonies  north  of  Maryland, 
and  the  Virginians  and  other  Southerners,  having 
abundance  of  other  amusements,  were  exempt 
from  the  excess.  In  Massachusetts  we  read  of 
one  funeral  costing  six  hundred  pounds,  which 
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Puritans  and  Philosophy 

was  one-fifth  of  the  man's  estate.  Families  often 
had  in  their  possession  tankards  and  mugs  full 
of  rings  which  they  had  "  made,"  as  they  ex 
pressed  it,  at  funerals.  One  minister  received 
in  thirty-two  years  two  thousand  nine  hundred 
and  forty  pairs  of  gloves,  which  he  thriftily  sold 
for  six  hundred  pounds  ;  and  Sewall  in  thirty- 
eight  years  had  "  made"  fifty-seven  rings. 

He  had  a  great  dislike  for  wigs,  and  was 
continually  lecturing  people  for  wearing  them, 
using  the  most  careful,  close,  and  learned  argu 
ments.  But  the  most  curious  part  of  his  diary 
is  the  account  of  his  courtships.  He  had  three 
wives.  The  first  he  lived  with  more  than  forty 
years,  the  second  he  married  within  two  years 
after  the  death  of  the  first,  and  he  began  to  court 
a  third  within  five  months  after  the  death  of  the 
second.  This  was  characteristic  of  the  Puritans. 
They  married  early  and  frequently.  Families 
of  twelve  or  thirteen  children  were  not  uncom 
mon  ;  and  women  unmarried  at  twenty-six  or 
twenty-seven  were  considered  irredeemable  old 
maids. 

It  was  a  natural  state  of  society,  in  which 
marriage  was  the  rule  and  children  desired. 
Bachelors  were  carefully  watched  and  treated 
almost  as  if  they  were  incompetents  or  idiots. 
They  were  not  allowed  to  live  alone.  Each 
one  was  assigned  to  a  family,  with  whom  he 
174 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

lived  and  who  were  responsible  for  his  keeping 
proper  hours. 

When  Sewall  was  courting  for  his  third  wife, 
he  was  sixty-eight  years  old.  He  and  his  son 
prayed  together  for  success.  This  old  beau 
gave  his  sweethearts  books  on  theology,  glazed 
almonds,  meers  cakes,  and  sometimes  a  quire  of 
paper ;  and  he  frequently  mentions  the  exadl 
price  of  these  presents.  A  lady  who  refused 
him  gave  as  one  of  her  reasons  that  she  could 
not  give  up  a  course  of  leftures  she  was 
attending. 

He  describes  some  of  the  details  of  his 
gallantry.  "Asked  her  to  acquit  me  of  rudeness 
if  I  drew  off  her  glove.  Enquiring  the  reason,  I 
told  her  'twas  great  odds  between  handling  a 
dead  goat  and  a  living  lady.  Got  it  off."  In 
another  passage  he  says,  "  Told  her  the  reason 
why  I  came  every  other  night  was  lest  I  should 
drink  too  deep  draughts  of  Pleasure."  When 
his  suit  became  hopeless,  he  enters  in  his  diary, 
"  I  did  not  bid  her  draw  off  her  glove  as  some 
time  I  had  done.  Her  dress  was  not  so  clean  as 
sometime  it  had  been,  Jehovah  Jireh  !" 

The  Puritans  would  not  allow  instrumental 
music  in  their  churches,  and  sung  the  Psalms 
in  a  drawling  tone  to  three  or  four  old  tunes, 
which  on  one  occasion  gave  Sewall  some  diffi 
culty. 

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Puritans  and  Philosophy 

"  Spake  to  me  to  set  the  tune  :  I  intended  Windsor  and 
fell  into  High  Dutch,  and  then  essaying  to  set  another 
tune  went  into  a  key  much  too  high.  So  I  prayed  Mr. 
White  to  set  it,  which  he  did  well,  Litchf.  Tune.  The 
Lord  humble  me,  that  I  should  be  occasion  of  any  Interrup 
tion  in  the  worship  of  God."  (Sewall  Papers,  ii.  p.  151.) 

The  Psalms  when  sung  were  usually  "  lined," 
as  it  was  called.  The  minister  or  clerk  read  a 
line,  which  was  sung,  and  then  the  next  line 
was  read  and  sung.  In  this  jerking  way  the 
drawling  song  proceeded  through  strange,  dis 
torted  verses  into  which  they  had  translated  the 
beautiful  language  of  David : 

"  Within  their  mouths  doe  thou  their  teeth 

break  out  o  God  most  strong, 

doe  thou  Jehovah,  the  great  teeth 

break,  of  the  lions  young." 

We  have  already  described  the  religious  mel 
ancholy  so  characteristic  of  the  Puritans  which 
seized  SewalPs  daughter  Betty.  It  seems  to 
have  been  brought  about,  however,  without  any 
pressure  from  her  father.  But  on  another  of 
his  children,  a  son,  he  worked  and  pried,  ap 
pealing  to  the  boy's  natural  fear  of  death  until 
the  poor  child  shrieked  in  terror.  Strong  people 
they  must  have  been  who  even  in  youth  could 
endure  such  strains  upon  their  nerves. 

Sewall  was,  nevertheless,  in  many  ways  a 
kindly,  good-hearted  man  in  spite  of  his  Puri- 
176 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

tanism.  But  he  was  an  extreme  conservative, 
struggled  hard  to  uphold  ecclesiasticism,  and 
looked  back  with  longing  to  the  old  days  of  in 
tolerance.  The  presence  of  Quakers  and  Bap 
tists  in  the  colony  annoyed  him,  and  he  regretted 
that  the  innovation  of  modern  ideas  prevented 
their  being  dealt  with.  One  Sunday  morning 
he  appeared  in  the  Old  South  Church,  handed 
a  paper  to  the  minister,  and  stood  while  it  was 
read.  The  paper  described  the  remorse  he  felt 
for  the  part  he  had  taken  in  the  Salem  witch 
craft,  and  his  conviftion  that  all  the  proceedings 
had  been  a  dreadful  mistake. 

Massachusetts  life  was  altogether  in  towns, 
and  the  same  system  pervaded  all  the  rest  of 
New  England.  It  grew  out  of  the  natural  con 
ditions  and  the  necessity  of  protection  from  the 
Indians.*  The  farms  were  small,  and  the  farmers 
could  easily  live  in  a  village  and  go  out  from  it  to 
till  their  fields.  One  of  the  old  laws  forbade  any 
one  to  live  more  than  a  mile  from  the  meeting 
house,  and  the  reason  for  this  law  was  probably 
partly  religious  and  partly  military. 

For  the  same  reason,  large  trafts  of  wild  land 
were  at  first  seldom  sold  to  individuals.  A  com 
pany  would  buy  a  traft,  establish  a  village  and 


*  For  the  origin  of  the  New  England  town  system  see 
"  Evolution  of  the  Constitution,"  p.  336. 
VOL.  I.— 12  177 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

township,  and  portion  out  the  land.  Every  man 
had  his  town  lot  and  his  farm  lot  with  certain 
rights  in  the  common.  Massachusetts  developed 
and  spread  herself  into  the  wilderness  by  means 
of  these  village  communities, — the  very  oppo 
site  of  the  large  plantation  life  of  Virginia.  The 
township  and  not  the  county  was  the  unit  of 
government. 

Each  town  was  an  instance  of  pure  democracy, 
and  the  system  increased  the  activity  of  mind  and 
the  united  feeling  of  the  people.  The  inhabitants 
of  the  town  met  together  in  a  body,  usually  in 
their  church  building,  eledled  their  treasurer  and 
selectmen,  arranged  the  assessment  of  taxes,  voted 
appropriations,  and  the  legislature  of  the  prov 
ince  was  composed  of  representatives  from  these 
towns. 

John  Dunton,  in  his  "  Letters  from  New 
England,"  gives  us  some  of  the  punishments  in 
Massachusetts  in  the  year  1686.  For  cursing 
and  swearing  the  tongue  was  bored  through 
with  a  hot  iron.  Scolds  were  gagged  and  sat  at 
their  own  doors  for  all  comers  and  goers  to  gaze 
at.  For  kissing  a  woman  in  the  street,  though 
but  in  way  of  civil  salute,  whipping  or  a  fine. 
A  white  woman  who  indulged  herself  in  an  In 
dian  lover  had  the  figure  of  an  Indian  cut  out  in 
red  cloth  sewed  upon  her  right  arm  and  was 
compelled  to  wear  it  a  year. 
178 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

In  regard  to  kissing  on  the  street,  which  was 
considered  a  great  indecency,  Burnaby,  in  his 
"  Travels  in  America  in  1759,"  relates  that  the 
captain  of  a  British  man-of-war,  which  was  em 
ployed  to  cruise  off  the  Massachusetts  coast, 
left  his  wife  in  Boston.  On  one  of  his  visits  to 
the  town  she  came  down  to  the  wharf  to  meet 
him,  and  was  saluted  by  her  husband  as  a  true 
and  loving  sailor's  wife  deserved.  But  he  was 
immediately  brought  before  the  magistrates,  who 
ordered  him  to  be  whipped,  and  he  was  obliged 
to  submit  to  the  punishment.  Whipping  was 
not  then  the  disgrace  it  is  now  ;  the  people  seem 
to  have  thought  as  lightly  of  it  as  if  they  were 
English  school-boys;  and  the  captain  soon  be 
came  quite  popular  in  the  town,  attending  ban 
quets  and  pleasure-parties,  and  entertained  even 
by  the  very  magistrates  who  had  ordered  him  to 
be  whipped. 

When  the  time  of  his  departure  arrived  he 
gave  a  farewell  entertainment  on  board  his  ship. 
Just  as  she  was  on  the  point  of  sailing,  and  after 
every  one  had  shaken  hands  with  him  and  was 
going  over  the  side,  the  magistrates  were  seized 
by  the  crew  and  stripped  to  the  waist.  Each 
one  was  led  to  the  gangway,  where  the  boatswain 
gave  him  forty  save  one  on  his  bare  back,  and 
then  hustled  him  over  into  the  boat  amid  the 
cheers  of  the  whole  ship's  company. 
179 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

When  we  read  the  writings  of  the  leading 
Puritans  we  are  led  to  infer  that  they  were  very 
strift  moralists,  and  intended  to  allow  of  no 
irregularities  among  married  or  single  people. 
Apparently  their  stri&ness  was  necessary  •  but 
of  course  it  is  extremely  difficult,  especially  in 
the  absence  of  statistics,  to  know  what  was  the 
real  state  of  affairs. 

In  nearly  all  the  colonies  there  appear  to  have 
been  violent  efforts  made  by  the  religious  bodies 
to  put  down  incontinence  among  the  unmarried. 
The  records  of  the  Quaker  meetings  in  Pennsyl 
vania  in  colonial  times  are  filled  with  instances 
of  discipline  administered  to  young  people  for 
this  offence,  and  we  find  the  same  in  Massachu 
setts  among  the  Puritans.  Dunton  tells  us  that 
there  hardly  passed  a  court  day  but  some  were 
convifted,  and  although  the  punishment  was  fine 
and  whipping,  the  crime  was  very  frequent. 

For  the  same  offence  by  a  married  person  the 
punishment  was  death ;  and  it  may  be  said  that, 
as  a  general  rule,  in  all  the  colonies  married 
life  was  very  safely  guarded.  Married  women 
usually  became  prudes  and  retired  from  all  amuse 
ments  and  pleasures,  while  a  great  deal  of  liberty 
was  allowed  to  the  unmarried  girls. 

There  was  a  method  of  courtship  which  pre 
vailed  in  Massachusetts  among  the  lower  orders 
of  the  people,  which  was  called  tarrying  or 
1 80 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

bundling,  and  it  was  certainly  either  very  inno 
cent  or  very  criminal.  It  was  common  in  other 
parts  of  New  England,  in  the  valley  of  the 
Hudson,  in  New  Jersey,  and  among  the  Ger 
mans  of  Pennsylvania,  and  is  described  with  some 
detail  in  the  Rev.  Dr.  Burnaby's  "  Travels  in 
America."  We  shall  have  more  to  say  of  it 
when  we  come  to  Connecticut. 

Dunton  has  some  further  observations  on 
Massachusetts  manners  in  1686,  and  expresses 
himself  rather  violently  : 

"  For  lying  and  cheating  they  outveye  Judas,  and  all 
the  false  other  cheats  in  Hell.  Nay  they  make  sport  of 
it :  Looking  upon  cheating  as  a  commendable  piece  of 
ingenuity,  commending  him  that  has  the  most  skill  to 
commit  a  piece  of  Roguery  ;  which  in  their  dialed!  (like 
those  of  our  Yea-and-Nay-Friends  in  England)  they  call  by 
the  genteel  name  of  Out- Witting  a  Man,  and  won't  own 
it  to  be  cheating."  ("  Letters  from  New  England," 
Prince  Society  edition,  73.) 

This  statement  must,  of  course,  have  been  a 
gross  exaggeration.  The  Puritans  were  no  doubt 
very  sharp  at  a  bargain,  and  bargaining  was  one 
of  the  amusements  they  allowed  themselves.  No 
doubt  some  of  them  had  amused  themselves  in 
this  way  with  Dunton.  He  was  a  phrase-maker 
and  fond  of  strong  sensational  assertions.  He 
afterwards  qualified  his  statement  by  saying, 
"  For  amongst  all  this  Dross  there  runs  here 
181 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

and  there  a  vein  of  pure  gold.  And  though 
the  Generality  are  what  I  have  described  'em, 
yet  is  there  as  sincere  a  pious  and  truly  a  Re 
ligious  People  among  them,  as  is  any  where  in 
the  Whole  World  to  be  found." 

But  although  his  first  assertion  is  too  strong, 
there  seems  to  have  been  some  ground  for  it. 
The  mass  of  the  Puritans  were  undoubtedly 
over-sharp,  and  John  Adams  himself  complained 
of  it.  At  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  when  on 
his  way  to  the  Continental  Congress  in  Philadel 
phia,  he  met  General  Alexander  McDougall  in 
New  York,  and  says  of  him  in  his  diary,  "  He 
is  a  very  sensible  man  and  an  open  one.  He 
has  none  of  the  mean  cunning  which  disgraces 
so  many  of  my  countrymen."  * 

There  are  many  touches  of"  Puritan  life  in 
Dunton's  letters.  He  was  a  bookseller,  and 
seems  to  have  done  well  in  the  business,  for 
books  and  printing  prospered  in  Boston  from 
the  beginning.  He  went  about  among  the  min 
isters,  talking  literature  and  encouraging  them  to 
buy. 

He  went  to  drill  with  the  militia,  and  as  soon 
as  they  had  come  into  the  field  he  tells  us  "  the 
captain  called  us  all  into  close  order,  in  order  to 
go  to  prayer,  and  then  prayed  himself."  He 

*  Adams's  Works,  vol.  ii.  p.  345. 
182 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

listened  also  to  the  terrible  sermons  which  were 
preached  to  criminals,  and  took  notes  of  them ; 
but  a  great  deal  of  what  he  says  reveals  the 
brighter  side  of  life. 

He  professed  to  have  had  in  Boston  three 
very  good  friends  among  the  women, — a  maid, 
whose  name  he  does  not  give,  but  calls  her 
the  Damsel ;  a  wife,  Mrs.  Green  ;  and  a  widow, 
Mrs.  Brick.  There  was  also,  he  says,  a  Mrs. 
Toy,  " parte  per  pale,  as  the  lawyers  say,  that 
is,  half  wife,  half  widow,  her  husband,  a  cap 
tain,  having  been  long  at  sea ;"  and  she  was  the 
most  charming  of  all.  "  She  has  the  bashful- 
ness  and  modesty  of  the  Damsel ;  the  love  and 
fidelity  of  Mrs.  Green  the  wife ;  and  the  piety 
and  sweetness  of  the  Widow  Brick." 

He  goes  on  describing  these  friends  in  the 
gallant,  half-mocking  way  which  was  fashionable 
among  smart  English  writers,  enlarging  much 
on  the  virgin  state  in  speaking  of  the  Damsel, 
of  whom  he  finally  says,  "  but  once  going  to 
kiss  her  I  thought  she  had  blushed  to  death." 

He  and  his  friend  Mr.  King  were  one  day 
a  whole  hour  persuading  the  Damsel  to  take  a 
ramble  with  them  and  accept  of  a  small  treat ; 
"  but  on  no  other  terms  could  we  prevail  but 
this,  that  she  might  have  the  company  of  Madam 
Brick  and  Mrs.  Green  and  Mrs.  Toy  (of  whom 
more  anon)  to  go  along  with  her." 
183 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

So  we  discover  that  the  Puritans  were  human 
after  all,  and,  in  the  midst  of  heresy,  witchcraft, 
and  slaughter  of  Quakers,  went  on  little  picnics. 
The  Damsel,  being  a  Puritan,  must  needs  be 
thorough  in  everything,  and  insisted  on  three 
chaperons ;  and  if  we  may  judge  of  Dunton  by 
his  manner  of  writing,  she  was  wise  in  her  de 
cision. 

It  is  probable  that  the  disfranchised  majority 
were  very  human,  and  indulged  in  rambles  and 
many  other  moderate  amusements,  but  they  have 
left  no  records  from  which  we  can  know  their 
life.  Their  tyrants  and  oppressors  were  the 
writers  of  the  colony. 

We  find  Dunton  describing  another  of  these 
rambles.  He  saw  Morgan,  the  murderer,  hung 
after  he  had  stood  an  hour  on  the  gallows  to  be 
preached  at,  and  had  given  a  most  edifying  con 
fession  to  the  surrounding  crowd.  From  this 
scene,  he  says,  "  I  rambled  to  the  House  of 
Feasting;  for  Mr.  York,  Mr.  King,  with  Madam 
Brick,  Mrs.  Green,  Mrs.  Toy,  the  Damsel,  and 
myself,  took  a  Ramble  to  a  place  called  Gover- 
nour's  Island  about  a  mile  from  Boston,  to  see 
a  whole  Hog  roasted,  as  did  several  other  Bos- 
tonians.  We  went  all  in  a  Boat ;  and  having 
treated  the  Fair  Sex,  returned  in  the  Evening." 

Before  the  year  1700  the  Puritans  attempted 
to  be  severe  in  their  dress,  and  laws  were  passed 
184 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

to  suppress  "  wicked  apparel."  But  the  things 
forbidden — the  lace,  the  gold  and  silver  thread, 
slashed  sleeves  and  embroideries — imply  an  in 
dulgence  in  brightness  and  color  which  is  not 
attempted  under  the  liberty  of  modern  times. 

There  were  orders  of  the  General  Court  for 
bidding  "  short  sleeves  whereby  the  nakedness 
of  the  arms  may  be  discovered."  Women's 
sleeves  were  not  to  be  more  than  half  an  ell 
wide.  There  were  to  be  no  "  immoderate  great 
sleeves,  immoderate  great  breeches,  knots  of 
ryban,  broad  shoulder  bands  and  rayles,  silk 
ruses,  double  ruffles  and  cuffs."  Long  hair  was 
prohibited  as  being  not  only  "  uncivil  and  un 
manly,"  but  too  much  like  ruffians,  Indians,  and 
women.  The  women  were  complained  of  be 
cause  of  their  "wearing  borders  of  hair  and 
their  cutting,  curling,  and  immodest  laying  out 
of  their  hair." 

Later  it  appears  that  "  wicked  apparel"  meant 
the  attempt  of  persons  of  mean  condition  to  ape 
"  the  garb  of  gentlemen  by  wearing  of  gold  and 
silver  lace  or  buttons  or  poynts  at  their  knees,  to 
walk  in  great  bootes."  Any  tailor  who  should 
make  clothes  for  children  or  servants  more 
gorgeous  than  their  parents  or  masters  directed 
was  to  be  fined.  The  poor  must  not  appear 
with  "  naked  breasts  and  arms ;  or  as  it  were 
pinioned  with  the  addition  of  superstitious  rib- 
185 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

bons  both  on  hair  and  apparel ;"  and  the  seledl- 
men  were  to  tax  those  who  exceeded  their  rank 
and  ability,  especially  in  ribbons  and  great  boots. 

Even  those  who  appear  to  have  thought  that 
they  restricted  themselves  were  dressed  in  a 
rather  lavish  manner.  When  we  read  the  very 
ascetic  and  repressive  writings  of  some  of  the 
ministers,  we  are  surprised,  on  looking  at  their 
portraits,  to  find  men  with  high  boots  like  a 
cavalryman's,  broad  collars,  and  a  general  air  of 
having  paid  much  attention  to  their  varied  attire. 

But  after  1700  there  was  little  or  no  effort 
at  repression,  and  the  bright  colors,  the  silk,  the 
velvet,  the  ruffles,  the  diamond  shoe-buckles,  and 
the  powdered  hair  flourished  in  Massachusetts  as 
in  Europe.  The  women  of  Boston,  who  in  the 
early  days  had  debated  whether  it  was  wicked  to 
come  to  church  without  a  veil,  had  before  the 
time  of  the  Revolution  expanded  most  extrava 
gantly  in  silks  and  brocades,  with  ostrich  feathers 
and  high  head-dresses. 

The  growth  of  wealth  from  the  commerce 
and  the  thrifty  habits  of  the  people  had  its  in 
evitable  effecl.  The  officials  connected  with 
the  royal  government  and  the  Church  of  England 
people  encouraged  gayety  and  set  the  example  of 
fashion.  These  people  had  no  traditions  of  ascet 
icism  or  severity,  and  the  religion  of  the  Eng 
lish  church  allowed  amusements  and  pleasures. 
186 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Their  head-quarters  was  King's  Chapel,  where 
the  services  of  the  English  church  were  held, 
at  first  in  a  wooden  building,  afterwards  in  the 
simple  but  beautiful  stone  structure  which  we 
see  to-day.  A  wickedness  and  abomination  it 
was  to  all  true  Puritan  eyes,  dispensing,  as  they 
thought,  the  doftrine  of  devils  and  tyranny;  and 
the  frequent  entries  in  its  records  for  repairs  to 
the  windows  have  been  supposed  by  some  to 
point  to  practical  exhibitions  of  hatred  by  the 
lower  classes. 

The  people  who  held  the  money,  offices,  and 
power  of  the  government,  who  subscribed  so 
liberally  to  King's  Chapel,  and  represented  in  the 
colony  the  court  of  St.  James,  were  an  influence 
which  could  not  be  resisted.  Their  families, 
dependants,  and  followers  took  precedence  in 
society  and  laid  down  rules  of  courtly  conduct. 
The  self-confidence  and  accomplishments  of  a 
courtier  are  in  their  way  as  strong  as  the  zeal  of 
a  fanatic ;  for  all  men  yield  their  homage  to  him 
who  obviously  plays  well  a  difficult  part. 

Among  the  Wendells,  Olivers,  Amorys,  Ap- 
thorps,  Bollans,  Chardons,  and  Shirleys  who 
formed  this  circle  was  one  whose  presence  was 
an  act  of  poetical  justice.  Thomas  Hutchinson, 
who,  after  filling  many  important  offices,  became 
the  royal  governor  in  1771,  was  the  grandson  of 
Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson,  who  had  been  cruelly 
187 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

banished  from  the  colony  for  her  liberal  opinions. 
It  was  a  most  fitting  revenge  that  he  should  rule 
them  ;  and  in  many  ways  he  was  an  excellent 
official,  returning  good  for  evil,  until  the  Revolu 
tion  came,  when  for  his  tory  principles  his 
house  was  sacked  and  he  himself  was  banished 
in  accordance  with  what  seemed  to  be  the  in 
evitable  fate  of  his  family. 

As  the  Quakers  had  taught  the  Puritans  the 
lesson  of  religious  liberty,  so  the  Church  of 
England  people  showed  them  the  moral  value  of 
enjoyment,  good  taste,  and  a  happy,  easy  life  ; 
and  many  a  stern  Puritan  family  surrendered. 
The  majority,  of  course,  held  back  and  stood  by 
the  ancient  traditions ;  but  even  these  were 
softened  and  enlightened ;  and  as  we  read  the 
change  of  habits  towards  the  time  of  the  Revolu 
tion,  it  is  strange  to  see  this  golden  gleam  pene 
trating  the  gloom  which  all  the  previous  history 
of  Massachusetts  has  given  us. 

The  Abbe  Robin,  who  visited  Boston  during 
the  Revolution,  tells  us  something  of  the  scenes 
in  the  principal  churches  : 

"  Deprived  of  all  shows  and  public  diversions  whatever, 
the  church  is  the  grand  theatre  where  they  attend,  to  dis 
play  their  extravagance  and  finery.  There  they  come 
dressed  off  in  the  finest  silks,  and  over-shadowed  with  a 
profusion  of  the  most  superb  plumes.  The  hair  of  the 
head  is  raised  and  supported  upon  cushions  to  an  extrava- 
1 88 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

gant  height,  somewhat  resembling  the  manner  in  which 
the  French  ladies  wore  their  hair  some  years  ago." 

In  the  early  days,  especially  in  the  country 
districts,  there  had  not  been  so  much  display. 
The  minister  often  had  his  musket  by  him  in 
the  pulpit,  the  congregation  had  their  weapons 
in  the  pews,  and  armed  sentinels  watched  outside. 
The  church-going  habits  of  the  people,  which 
placed  nearly  the  whole  population  of  a  country 
side  in  one  building,  was  a  tempting  opportunity 
to  the  Indians,  and  one  or  two  tragedies  com 
pelled  the  most  watchful  precautions. 

In  the  country  the  people  came  to  church 
from  long  distances  with  their  dinner ;  husbands 
riding  on  horseback,  with  their  wives  on  pillions, 
and  the  younger  people  walking.  Hundreds  of 
horses  were  often  seen  fastened  round  the  meet 
ing-house  ;  and  when  the  first  service  was  over, 
dinner  was  eaten,  and  gossip  and  discussion 
followed  until  it  was  time  for  the  afternoon 
sermon. 

Under  the  new  influence  of  the  royal  govern 
ors  and  the  general  manner  of  dress  of  the 
age,  Boston  about  the  year  1765  was  in  some 
respefts  a  gayer,  brighter  place  in  outward  ap 
pearance  than  it  is  now.  The  governor  drove 
in  his  great  coach  with  six  horses  well  groomed, 
and  resplendent  with  harness  and  liveried  ser 
vants.  The  wealthy  citizens  often  had  coaches 
189 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

with  four  horses,  and  they  walked  the  streets  in 
their  cocked  hats,  and  yellow,  red,  blue,  or 
green  coats  and  waistcoats  according  to  their 
taste. 

Their  houses  were  large,  and  full  of  handsome 
silverware,  furniture,  glass,  china,  and  tapestry 
imported  from  England.  They  began  to  in 
dulge  in  riding,  hunting,  fishing,  and  skating  as 
amusements.  They  took  sleigh-rides  in  winter, 
with  a  supper  and  dance  when  they  returned, 
and  in  summer  they  had  picnics  down  the  har 
bor  and  excursions  into  the  country  to  drink 
tea.  Some  of  them  began  to  have  country-seats. 
But  they  drew  the  line  at  theatres,  and  actors 
were  not  tolerated  until  after  the  Revolu 
tion. 

Chastellux,  on  his  visit  to  Boston  at  the  close 
of  the  Revolution,  when  the  French  fleet  was 
there  and  there  was  a  great  deal  of  entertaining, 
speaks  of  "  a  ton  of  ease  and  freedom  which 
is  pretty  general  at  Boston,  and  cannot  fail  of 
being  pleasing  to  the  French."  But  the  Bos- 
tonians  did  not  dance  well.  In  facl,  he  says 
they  were  very  awkward,  especially  in  the 
minuet ;  and  the  ladies,  though  well  dressed, 
had  "  less  elegance  and  refinement  than  at  Phila 
delphia."  He,  however,  mentions  three  ladies 
who  were  good  dancers, — Mrs.  Jarvis,  Miss 
Betsy  Broom,  and  Mrs.  Whitmore. 
190 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Many  of  the  people  were  taking  advantage  of 
the  presence  of  the  fleet  to  learn  French.  As 
the  Revolution  was  just  over,  every  one  was  ex 
pressing  a  great  dislike  for  everything  English, 
and  Chastellux  says  they  were  much  mortified 
to  think  that  they  spoke  the  English  language. 
Instead  of  saying,  "  Do  you  speak  English  ?" 
they  would  say,  "  Do  you  speak  American  ?" 
And  then  he  tells  of  a  characteristic  Boston 
suggestion : 

*'  Nay,  they  have  carried  it  even  so  far,  as  seriously  to 
propose  introducing  a  new  language  5  and  some  persons 
were  desirous,  for  the  convenience  of  the  public,  that  the 
Hebrew  should  be  substituted  for  the  English.  The  pro 
posal  was,  that  it  should  be  taught  in  the  schools,  and 
made  use  of  in  all  public  adls.  We  may  imagine  that  this 
projedl  went  no  farther."  (Vol.  ii.  p.  264.) 

There  were  clubs  then  like  those  known  in 
our  own  time,  which  met  in  turn  at  the  houses 
of  the  members  to  dine  and  discuss  questions  of 
interest,  and  at  some  of  these  meetings  songs 
were  sung.  Card  playing  Chastellux  found  very 
prevalent  among  the  upper  classes.  Before  the 
war  it  had  been  accompanied  by  a  great  deal  of 
gambling  for  high  stakes ;  but  by  common  con 
sent  almost  every  one  had  agreed  not  to  play  for 
money  until  independence  was  secured.  "  It  is 
fortunate,  perhaps,"  he  says,  "  that  the  war 
happened  when  it  did,  to  moderate  this  passion, 
191 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

which  began  to  be  attended  with  dangerous  con 
sequences  ;"  and  the  translator  explains  in  a  note 
that  there  were  frequent  suicides. 

From  diaries  and  other  sources  we  have 
glimpses  of  an  amount  of  festivity  and  gayety 
at  this  time  which  would  not  now  he  found  in 
any  town  of  only  sixteen  thousand  inhabitants, 
which  Boston  then  contained.  Indeed,  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  Revolution  the  people  of  all  the 
colonies  were  in  a  most  flourishing  and  happy 
state,  leading  a  glorious  life  of  enjoyment,  which 
the  conflict  with  England  and  the  ideas  of  the 
French  Revolution  which  were  introduced  cruelly 
broke  up.  We  gained  independence  and  de 
mocracy,  but  we  lost  a  great  deal  which  we 
have  only  recently  begun  to  restore ;  and  the 
tories,  who  saw  this  loss  and  left  the  country 
in  disgust,  deserve  a  certain  amount  of  sympathy. 

One  of  the  most  pleasing  pictures  of  the  pomp 
and  circumstance  of  colonial  life  in  Boston  a  few 
years  before  the  Revolution  is  John  Adams's 
description  of  the  scene  at  the  argument  of 
the  great  question  of  writs  of  assistance  in  the 
council  chamber  of  the  old  State-House  : 

"  The  council  chamber  was  as  respectable  an  apartment 
as  the  House  of  Commons  or  the  House  of  Lords  in  Great 
Britain, in  proportion}  or  that  in  the  State  House  in  Phila 
delphia  in  which  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was 
signed  in  1776.  In  this  chamber  round  a  great  fire  were 
I92 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

seated  five  judges  with  Lieutenant-Governor  Hutchinson 
at  their  head  as  chief  justice,  all  arrayed  in  their  new,  fresh, 
rich  robes  of  scarlet  English  broadcloth ;  in  their  large 
cambric  bands  and  immense  judicial  wigs.  In  this  cham 
ber  were  seated  at  a  long  table  all  the  barristers-af-law  of 
Boston  and  of  the  neighboring  county  of  Middlesex,  in 
gowns,  bands,  and  tie  wigs.  They  were  not  seated  on  ivory 
chairs,  but  their  dress  was  more  solemn  and  more  pompous 
than  that  of  the  Roman  senate  when  the  Gauls  broke  in 
upon  them.  Two  portraits  at  more  than  full  length,  of 
King  Charles  the  Second  and  of  King  James  the  Second 
in  splendid  golden  frames,  were  hung  up  on  the  most  con 
spicuous  sides  of  the  apartment.  If  my  young  eyes  or  old 
memory  have  not  deceived  me,  these  were  as  fine  pictures 
as  I  ever  saw  j  the  colors  of  the  royal  ermines  and  long 
flowing  robes  were  the  most  glowing,  the  figures  the  most 
noble  and  graceful,  the  features  the  most  distinct  and  char 
acteristic,  far  superior  to  those  of  the  king  and  queen  of 
France  in  the  senate  chamber  of  Congress." 

Among  these  new  people  and  manners  which 
the  royal  governor  and  his  courtly  followers 
introduced,  we  have  the  interesting  episode  of 
Sir  Harry  Frankland,  whose  love-affair  Dr. 
Holmes  has  celebrated  in  his  poem  "  Agnes," 
and  less  skilful  hands  have  at  times  made  of  it  a 
novel  or  short  story.  His  family  was  a  very 
ancient  one,  and  from  time  immemorial  their  seat 
had  been  Great  Thirkleby  Hall,  at  Thirsk,  in 
Yorkshire.  Through  a  female  branch  Sir  Harry 
was  descended  from  Cromwell  ;  but  he  had 
none  of  the  Puritan  ideas  of  this  ancestor,  and, 
VOL.  I.— 13  193 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

from  entries  in  his  diary,  seems  to  have  had  no 
little  contempt  for  the  Great  Protector. 

He  was  educated  in  the  liberal  manner  of  a 
young  English  nobleman  of  his  time,  and  was 
intended,  as  many  of  them  still  are,  for  employ 
ment  under  the  government.  In  1741,  at  the 
age  of  twenty-five,  he  was  made  collector  of  the 
port  of  Boston,  and  immediately  took  his  place 
as  a  handsome  and  accomplished  man  among 
the  royalists  of  the  government  circle  who  kept 
up  the  manners  of  the  English  aristocracy.  His 
fortune  from  his  English  estates  was  a  good  one, 
with  prospects  of  increase,  and  his  salary  and 
perquisites  as  collector  gave  him  quite  a  large 
income. 

His  character  was  a  rather  curious  mixture. 
He  had  the  love  of  sport  and  oat-door  life  and 
the  loose  habits  of  drinking  and  carousing  which 
were  common  among  his  class ;  yet  his  face  in 
his  portrait  is  of  a  delicate  cast,  with  an  ex 
pression  which  seems  to  show  great  sweetness 
of  temper.  From  his  diary  and  other  sources 
we  gather  that  he  was  imaginative,  nervous, 
somewhat  inclined  to  ill  health,  and  in  the  im 
portant  public  positions  he  occupied  found  that 
he  must  make  considerable  effort  to  keep  him 
self  cool  and  collected.  He  had  with  him  a 
natural  son  whom  he  called  Henry  Cromwell. 
He  was  fond  of  literature  and  art,  and  botany 
194 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

and  landscape  gardening  were  among  the  strong 
passions  of  his  life. 

A  year  after  his  arrival  he  had  occasion  to 
visit  Marblehead,  or  Marvil,  as  it  was  some 
times  called,  on  public  business,  and  at  the  tav 
ern  where  he  stopped  he  saw  a  beautiful  girl  of 
about  sixteen  scrubbing  the  floor.  She  was 
barefooted  and  meanly  dressed,  but  with  jet- 
black  hair  and  sparkling  eyes.  Calling  her  to 
him,  no  doubt  with  that  gallant  but  patronizing 
air  the  men  of  fashion  were  wont  to  assume  to 
wards  women  in  her  condition  of  life,  he  found 
that  she  answered  his  questions  with  remarkable 
brightness  and  intelligence,  and  he  gave  her  a 
crown  to  buy  a  pair  of  shoes. 

Afterwards,  when  he  was  again  at  Marblehead, 
he  saw  Agnes  Surriage  still  scrubbing  the  floors 
and  without  shoes. 

"  Why  have  you  not  bought  them  ?"  he 
said. 

"  I  have,  indeed,  sir,  with  the  crown  you  gave 
me ;  but  I  keep  them  to  wear  to  meeting." 

Frankland  was  now  completely  captivated,  and 
he  obtained  permission  from  her  parents  to  take 
her  to  Boston,  where  she  was  given  the  best 
education  the  town  could  afford,  and  became  the 
school-mate  of  the  daughters  of  the  most  prom 
inent  people.  She  grew  to  be  an  accomplished 
young  woman,  and  it  is  said  was  carefully  in- 
195 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

strutted  in  religion  under  the  Rev.  Dr.  Edward 
Holyoke,  president  of  Harvard  College. 

Meantime  Frankland  amused  himself  with 
fox-hunting  and  the  other  sports  which  the 
wilderness  of  Massachusetts  afforded,  pursued 
smugglers  with  diligence,  and  assisted  the  gov 
ernor  and  his  followers  to  introduce  more 
courtly  manners  among  the  Puritans.  From 
the  widowed  mother  of  Agnes  he  bought  a  vast 
traft  of  wild  land  in  Maine,  between  the  Ken- 
nebec  and  St.  Croix  Rivers,  for  fifty  pounds,  evi 
dently  only  for  the  purpose  of  assisting  her,  for 
the  land  was  of  little  value,  and  afterwards 
became  involved  in  confused  litigation,  which 
had  to  be  settled  by  an  act  of  the  legislature  in 
1 8 1 1 .  He  was  also  a  prominent  member  of  the 
congregation  of  King's  Chapel,  to  which  he  gave 
liberally. 

Agnes  had  become  a  woman  of  twenty-three 
or  four  and  of  irresistible  attraction  ;  but  Frank- 
land's  pride  of  family  would  not  bend  to  the  in 
dignity  of  marrying  the  person  who  had  been  a 
scrubbing  girl,  and  in  this  he  was  merely  fol 
lowing  the  accepted  rule  of  his  class.  But,  like 
others  of  that  class,  he  was  self-willed  and  im 
pulsive.  He  won  Agnes's  heart  and  took  her  to 
his  house  to  live  with  him  without  a  marriage 
ceremony  and  in  spite  of  her  religious  instructor, 
the  president  of  Harvard  College. 
196 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

"  But  who  would  dream  our  sober  sires 

Had  learned  the  Old  World's  ways, 
And  warmed  their  hearths  with  lawless  fires 
In  Shirley's  homespun  days  !" 

Then  there  was  an  outbreak  in  the  high  life 
of  Boston.  For  half  a  century  the  governor 
and  his  royalist  retainers  had  been  slowly  teach 
ing  the  Puritans  the  code  of  pleasure  of  the 
Cavaliers  ;  but  this  last  precept  was  a  little  too 
much.  Agnes's  schoolmates  were  indignant  and 
their  families  were  all  indignant,  and  there  was 
such  an  excitement  in  the  town  that  Agnes  and 
her  lover  could  no  longer  live  there  in  peace. 
Boston  had  always  been  severe  to  those  who, 
from  Roger  Williams  to  the  Quakers,  had  un 
dertaken  to  teach  her  more  than  she  cared  to 
learn. 

So  Frankland  bought  a  traft  of  nearly  five 
hundred  acres  in  the  town  of  Hopkinton,  about 
twenty-five  miles  southwest  of  Boston,  and  there, 
on  the  slope  of  a  great  hill  where  John  Eliot 
had  had  an  Indian  mission,  he  built  a  mansion- 
house  and  began  that  Virginia  life  which  Eng 
lishmen  of  his  sort  so  dearly  loved. 

He  had  a  few  negro  slaves  ;  he  built  a  great 
barn  and  granary  ;  laid  out  orchards  of  apples, 
pears,  plums,  cherries,  and  peaches ;  set  out 
elm-trees  ;  planted  shrubbery,  lilacs,  and  haw 
thorns  ;  and  had  a  garden  surrounded  with  box. 
197 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Some  years  ago  many  of  the  trees  he  had  planted 
were  still  standing,  the  box  had  grown  ten  feet 
high,  and  the  trunks  of  the  lilac  bushes  were 
eight  inches  in  diameter. 

"  The  box  is  glistening  huge  and  green ; 

Like  trees  the  lilacs  grow  ; 
Three  elms  high  arching  still  are  seen, 
And  one  lies  stretched  below." 

The  house  was  large,  with  a  flower-garden  in 
front ;  the  hall  with  fluted  columns,  hung  with 
tapestry  ;  the  chimney-pieces  of  Italian  marble  ; 
and  here  Frankland  and  the  erring  Agnes  lived 
an  ideal  life.  They  directed  the  slaves,  read 
their  favorite  authors,  cultivated  the  flowers, 
and  Agnes  was  very  fond  of  music.  People 
from  Boston  who  had  concluded  not  to  be  as 
indignant  as  some  of  the  others  came  to  stay 
with  them,  and  there  appear  to  have  been  fami 
lies  in  the  neighborhood  with  whom  they  were 
familiar. 

There  was  many  a  wassail  bout,  at  which 
Frankland  is  said  to  have  used  a  wine-cup  of 
double  thickness,  so  that  he  could  drink  his  com 
panions  under  the  table  and  still  keep  his  head, 
which  in  wine  was  not  a  strong  one.  He 
hunted  the  deer,  which  were  numerous  in  the 
woods,  and  fished  for  the  trout  which  filled  the 
cool  brooks.  He  had  no  doubt  become  familiar 
with  Hopkinton  in  his  shooting  expeditions,  and 
198 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

chose  it  for  a   home    because   it  was   a   natural 
game  preserve. 

After  about  three  years  of  this  life  Frankland 
and  Agnes  visited  England ;  but  here  there  was 
a  terrible  break  in  their  happiness.  The  family 
of  her  lover  not  only  would  not  receive  her, 
but  treated  her  with  the  brutal  scorn  and  con 
tempt  which  the  English  know  so  well  how  to 
administer.  In  Massachusetts  she  had  had  some 
friends, — a  party,  a  following ;  but  in  England, 
in  a  strange  land,  she  had  none.  The  care  and 
devotion  of  her  lover — and  it  is  probable  that 
few  men  could  excel  him  in  tenderness  to  women 
— were  no  alleviation  of  her  misery  and  melan 
choly.  There  was  nothing  that  could  be  done 
but  go  away, — be  banished  again  as  in  Boston. 

After  a  year's  travel  on  the  Continent,  they 
settled  themselves  at  Lisbon,  in  Portugal,  partly 
for  pleasure  and  partly,  probably,  to  look  after 
some  affairs  of  the  British  government  with 
which  Frankland  had  been  intrusted.  Lisbon 
was  at  that  time  one  of  the  most  lively,  wealthy, 
and  corrupt  cities  of  Europe.  It  had  a  strong 
commercial  connection  with  England,  was  full 
of  English  merchants,  and  Englishmen  of  all 
sorts  came  there  for  business,  health,  or  amuse 
ment.  It  had  been  visited  by  George  White- 
field,  the  preacher,  and  the  novelist,  Henry 
Fielding,  who  died  there. 
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Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Agnes  and  Frankland  took  a  furnished  house 
and  adopted  a  very  courtly  style  of  living,  which 
was  warranted  by  the  increased  wealth  which 
had  recently  come  to  them  from  a  favorable 
decision  in  the  English  courts.  They  became 
prominent  in  the  gay  and  dissolute  life  which 
must  have  made  the  sports  and  entertainments 
of  the  country  place  at  Hopkinton  seem  very 
tame  and  commonplace.  But  they  had  been 
there  hardly  a  year  when,  on  All  Saints'  Day,  at 
ten  o'clock  in  the  morning,  the  churches  crowded 
with  people,  and  the  gorgeous  ritual  just  begun, 
the  earth  began  to  heave  and  roll  like  the  waves 
of  the  ocean,  and  the  next  instant  churches,  pal 
aces,  and  humble  houses  came  crashing  down  in 
massive  piles,  burying  thirty  thousand  of  the 
shrieking  multitudes. 

For  twenty  minutes  the  earth  rocked,  the  sun 
was  darkened,  the  water  of  the  Tagus  River 
rolled  back  to  the  sea,  leaving  the  vessels  on  the 
mud,  and  then  came  roaring  in  again  in  a  great 
wave.  The  prisons  were  open  and  the  crimi 
nals  were  loose  on  the  town,  which  was  soon 
on  fire. 

Frankland  was  driving  with  a  lady  when  the 
shock  came,  and  was  buried  beneath  the  house 
he  was  passing.  The  horses  were  instantly 
killed,  and  the  lady  in  her  agony  bit  through 
the  sleeve  of  his  coat  and  tore  a  piece  out  of  his 
200 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

arm.  Still  alive,  but  crushed  beneath  the  mass 
of  the  building,  he  reviewed  his  life,  and,  among 
many  errors  to  be  atoned  for,  made  a  solemn 
vow  to  God  that  if  he  was  delivered  he  would 
make  Agnes  his  lawful  wife. 

The  next  instant  she  appeared.  She  had 
been  rushing  through  the  distracted  town  to  find 
him,  and,  recognizing  his  voice  beneath  the 
'ruins,  offered  large  rewards  for  men  who  would 
dig  him  out.  After  an  hour's  labor  he  was 
dragged  forth,  wounded  and  bleeding.  As  soon 
as  he  recovered  he  was  married  to  her  by  a 
Roman  priest,  for  the  ceremony  was  not  allowed 
to  be  performed  in  Portugal  by  the  minister  of 
any  other  religion.  They  sailed  for  England, 
and,  once  on  the  ship  and  clear  of  Portuguese 
jurisdiction,  he  had  the  ceremony  performed 
again  by  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England. 

Agnes  was  now  well  received  in  England,  and 
the  beautiful  scrubbing  girl  of  Marblehead  be 
came  a  familiar  figure  among  the  aristocracy  of 
London.  After  another  short  visit  to  Lisbon, 
they  returned  to  Boston,  and,  all  reasons  for  exile 
being  removed,  they  resolved  to  have  a  city  as 
well  as  a  country  residence.  They  bought  the 
Clarke  mansion  on  Garden  Street,  a  large  house 
with  twenty-six  rooms,  which  they  adorned 
with  pictured  panels,  Italian  marble  and  porce 
lain  fireplaces  in  the  most  elaborate  luxury. 
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Puritans  and  Philosophy 

The  floor  of  one  of  the  rooms,  it  is  said,  was 
laid  in  a  tessellated  pattern  of  more  than  three 
hundred  different  kinds  of  wood. 

In  one  of  the  rooms  of  the  house  at  Hopkin- 
ton  Frankland  hung  the  coat  he  had  worn  on 
the  day  of  the  earthquake,  with  the  hole  in  the 
arm  where  the  lady  had  bitten  through  it,  and 
also  his  rapier,  bent  by  the  falling  stones.  Every 
autumn,  on  All  Saints'  Day,  he  went  alone  to 
the  room  to  view  these  relics  and  ponder  sol 
emnly  on  the  event  and  his  vows. 

Agnes  Surriage,  of  Marblehead,  was  now  Lady 
Frankland  ;  she  had  seen  the  best  and  the  gayest 
as  well  as  the  worst  life  of  her  time,  her  repu 
tation  and  character  were  saved,  and  she  no  doubt 
was  an  authority  on  court  manners  among  the 
people  of  the  royal  government  who  were  laying 
the  foundations  of  fashionable  life  at  Boston. 
But  she  was  not  proud,  they  say,  and  received 
cordially  at  her  house  her  relations  from  the 
little  village  where  Frankland  had  first  seen  her 
at  the  tavern. 

He  was  appointed  in  1757  consul-general  at 
Lisbon,  and  again  left  Boston.  He  seems  to 
have  returned  in  1763,  and  lived  for  a  time  at 
Hopkinton,  to  which  he  was  sincerely  attached, 
and  would  no  doubt  have  spent  the  rest  of  his 
days  there  in  the  enjoyment  of  ease  and  the 
pleasures  of  books,  trees,  and  sport,  of  which 
202 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

he  never  wearied ;  but  his  health  was  declining. 
He  went  to  England  and  lived  at  Bath,  where 
he  died  in  1768,  in  his  fifty-second  year. 

After  his  death  Lady  Frankland  almost  imme 
diately  sailed  for  America,  and  went  to  live  at 
Hopkinton  with  Harry  Cromwell,  her  husband's 
natural  son,  of  whom  she  seems  to  have  been 
fond.  She  also  took  into  her  household  her 
sister,  with  her  children  and  some  other  rela 
tions,  and  the  old  life  of  her  honeymoon  was  in 
part  renewed.  She  managed  the  farm,  planted 
and  ornamented  the  grounds  with  shrubbery  and 
flowers,  rode  on  horseback,  and  indulged  in  her 
life-long  love  of  music.  She  had  many  visitors, 
and  seems  to  have  made  a  point  of  entertaining 
the  clergy  of  the  English  church. 

She  is  described  as  slender,  with  a  dark,  lus 
trous  eye,  rather  majestic  carriage,  and  a  melo 
dious  voice.  An  interesting  woman  she  must 
have  been,  and  her  lover  an  attractive  man  ;  but 
the  details  of  her  life  are  few,  and  her  strange 
career  had  been  almost  forgotten  until  revived 
in  the  present  century  by  the  researches  of  Mr. 
Nason,  who  became  the  owner  of  her  country- 
seat  at  Hopkinton. 

When  the  Revolution  came  in  1775  sne  found 

herself  a  tory,  and  there  was  nothing  for  her  to 

do  but  suffer  exile  again.     She  started  for  Boston 

to  get  through   the  lines  of  the  armed  Puritan 

203 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

farmers,  who  were  beginning  to  form  the  Con 
tinental  army,  and  was  soon  stopped  and  put 
under  arrest.  Finally  she  was  allowed  to  pass 
and  take  with  her,  as  the  order  read,  "6  trunks, 
I  chest,  3  beds  and  bedding,  6  wethers,  2  pigs, 
i  small  keg  of  pickled  tongues,  some  hay,  3  bags 
of  corn,'*  which  seems  a  strange  detail  in  such  a 
romantic  career. 

The  British  officers  in  Boston  received  her 
with  much  kindness,  especially  Burgoyne,  whom 
she  had  known  in  Portugal,  and  from  the  win 
dows  of  her  house  in  Garden  Street  she  saw  the 
battle  of  Bunker  Hill.  She  sailed  for  England, 
and  lived  with  the  Franklands.  Seven  years 
after,  at  the  age  of  fifty-six,  she  broke  the  spell 
of  her  romance  and  married  John  Drew,  a  rich 
banker ;  but  she  received  the  fate  she  deserved 
for  such  an  aft,  and  died  within  a  year. 

The  changes  in  Puritan  manners  which  such 
men  as  Frankland  and  the  royal  governors  intro 
duced  were  not  accepted  without  protest.  In 
1740  the  dancing  assembly  was  making  its  way 
with  difficulty,  and  the  ladies  who  resorted  to  it 
were  described  by  some  as  with  but  little  regard 
for  their  reputation.  In  1773,  under  the  influ 
ence  of  the  British  officers  in  the  town,  a  drum 
or  rout  given  by  the  admiral  on  Saturday  night 
lasted  until  two  or  three  o'clock  on  Sunday 
morning,  causing  a  great  scandal ;  but  after  the 
204 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

officers  had  disappeared  such  performances  were 
impossible. 

The  people  were  still  Puritans.  The  new 
life  was  merely  an  outward  varnish.  They 
were  stiff,  formal,  and  reserved ;  and  even 
among  those  who  were  accounted  worldly  and 
gay  there  was  a  simplicity  of  thought  and  con- 
duel  which  still  lingers  in  Boston,  and  will  in 
all  probability  be  a  characteristic  for  many  years 
to  come. 

The  old  inquisitorial  habits  clung  to  them, 
and  they  pried  into  people's  history  and  business 
in  a  way  that  was  very  offensive  to  strangers 
and  travellers, — a  habit  which  has  since  been 
known  as  Yankee  inquisitiveness.  A  Virginian 
who  had  been  much  in  New  England  in  colonial 
times  used  to  relate  that  as  soon  as  he  arrived  at 
an  inn  he  always  summoned  the  master  and 
mistress,  the  servants  and  all  the  strangers  who 
were  about,  made  a  brief  statement  of  his  life 
and  occupation,  and  having  assured  everybody 
that  they  could  know  no  more,  asked  for  his 
supper;  and  Franklin,  when  travelling  in  New 
England,  was  obliged  to  adopt  the  same  plan. 

As  a  class  the  Puritans  of  Massachusetts  were 
a  humorous,  witty  people.  Their  early  writ 
ings,  even  when  very  religious,  often  show  a 
disposition  to  pun,  and  in  some  of  their  books 
describing  the  lives  of  pious  ministers  and  godly 
205 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

churches  statements  are  occasionally  made  in 
epigrammatic  little  verses.  They  had  such  a 
keen  sense  of  the  ridiculous  that  it  is  rather 
strange  that  they  were  not  sooner  delivered  from 
their  religious  excesses.  Their  ordinary  inter 
course  with  one  another  seems  to  have  been  always 
characterized  by  sarcastic  chaffing  and  a  dry, 
sharp  sort  of  humor,  which,  with  shelling  nuts 
round  the  fire  and  telling  stories,  was  one  of  the 
few  pleasures  they  allowed  themselves  in  the 
early  days. 

This  same  humor  and  love  of  puns  and  epi 
grams  have  survived  in  a  refined,  elevated,  and 
keener  form  in  the  poems  of  Lowell  and 
Holmes,  and  there  is  often  a  touch  of  it  in 
Hawthorne  and  Emerson,  as  well  as  in  other 
Massachusetts  writers.  The  "  Biglow  Papers" 
are  largely  a  reproduction  of  this  humor  as  it 
existed  among  the  common  people  in  Lowell's 
time.  Indeed,  there  is  no  part  of  America 
where  all  the  early  traits  of  the  people  come 
down  in  such  direct  lines  to  the  present.  The 
grim  humor  in  which  the  original  Puritan 
thought  it  no  sin  to  indulge  has  proved  to  be  a 
most  copious  source  of  the  literature  of  Massa 
chusetts. 

In  the  smaller  towns  outside  of  Boston  the 
royal  governors  and  their  ideas  had,  of  course, 
less  influence.  The  people  were  suspicious  of 
206 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

pleasures ;  and  the  handsome  velvet  suits  and 
silverware  which  we  are  surprised  to  find  so 
many  of  them  had  were  often  stored  away  and 
descended  in  the  family  as  heirlooms  which  were 
never  used.  They  resented  any  tendency  in  their 
preachers  to  expound  comforting  or  pleasant 
doctrine  in  place  of  the  old  damnation  and  ter 
rors.  They  did  not  want  religion  made  easy  ; 
and  there  is  a  curious  complaint  against  a  certain 
minister  because  he  had  set  forth  "  too  many 
dainties." 

Although  the  community  was  full  of  energy, 
power,  and  ability,  it  was  all  hard,  economical, 
and  repressed,  and  there  was  none  of  the 
generous  and  expansive  hospitality  of  the  Vir 
ginia  planter.  There  was  a  certain  accurate 
kindness  and  politeness  ;  for  prosperity  was  uni 
versal,  beggars  and  paupers  were  almost  un 
known,  and  everybody  felt  that  his  respectability 
imposed  duties  which  must  be  performed. 

Chastellux  is  reported  to  have  said  that  in  sev 
eral  instances  where  he  brought  letters  of  intro 
duction  to  people  by  whom  he  was  pleasantly 
entertained,  he  was  handed  a  bill  for  the  trouble 
and  expense,  as  if  he  had  been  at  a  tavern.  An 
examination  of  his  book  does  not  reveal  any 
such  statement.  The  inns  in  New  England 
were  often  overcrowded,  and  when  that  hap 
pened  travellers  were  sent  to  respectable  families 
207 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

near  by  who  were  willing  to  take  them,  and  in 
such  cases  they  always  expected  to  be  paid  for 
their  trouble. 

In  some  respefts  there  may  be  said  to  have 
been  a  decided  aristocracy  in  Massachusetts.  It 
was  not  a  landed  aristocracy  like  that  of  Virginia, 
although  there  were  some  large  estates.  Its 
members  had  not  such  absolute  control  of  po 
litical  power  as  the  Southern  planters,  and  yet 
they  had  control.  It  consisted  more  of  a  recog 
nition  of  social  distinctions,  a  deference  paid  to 
families  of  wealth,  long-established  position,  and 
ability  in  public  service  ;  and  it  was  a  settled  rule 
that  men  of  such  families  were  to  be  elefted  to 
public  office. 

In  all  the  churches  the  pews  were  assigned  in 
accordance  with  social  rank,  or,  as  it  was  some 
times  expressed,  in  accordance  with  "  authority, 
age,  wealth,  and  house  lots,"  a  custom  which 
caused  endless  bickerings  and  heart-burnings,  and 
gave  the  deacons  in  charge  of  the  matter  a  very 
thankless  task.  At  Harvard  College  the  fresh 
men  were  arranged  every  year  in  a  list  according 
to  the  social  rank  of  their  parents,  and  each 
student  was  compelled  to  retain  throughout  his 
course  the  rank  that  was  thus  assigned  him. 

The  English  distinctions  of  the  time  among 
gentlemen,  yeomen,  merchants,  and  mechanics 
were  sharply  drawn  ;  and  the  ministers,  of  course, 
208 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

were  ranked  at  the  top,  and  often  had  the  hand 
somest  houses  in  the  community.  Indeed,  the 
congregations  usually  took  great  pride  in  the 
houses  they  gave  their  ministers. 

Many  of  the  prominent  people  near  Boston 
and  the  important  towns  like  Salem  and  Marble- 
head  had  houses  which  might  almost  be  described 
as  magnificent.  The  Lee  house  at  Marblehead 
is  said  to  have  cost  ten  thousand  pounds,  a  sum 
which  was  the  equivalent  of  nearly  two  hundred 
thousand  dollars  in  modern  times.  Similar 
houses  were  scattered  about,  often  built  of  stone, 
wainscoted  in  hard  woods  and  mahogany,  with 
carved  mantel-pieces,  pictures  set  in  panels,  and 
walls  hung  with  tapestry. 

The  remnant  of  the  old  life  which  proved  to 
be  most  enduring  was  the  observance  of  the 
Sabbath,  a  name  which  has  come  into  ill  repute 
with  many  religious  people  because  it  was  the 
favorite  Puritan  name  for  Sunday.  But  they 
often  used  the  more  touching  expression,  the 
Lord's  Day. 

The  Sabbath  began  with  the  Puritans  at  six 
o'clock  on  Saturday  evening  and  lasted  until 
sunset  on  Sunday.  No  one  could  work,  or 
amuse  himself,  or  even  be  shaved  by  a  barber. 
No  travelling  was  allowed,  and  the  inns  were 
all  closed.  The  story  is  told  of  Robert  Pike 
that,  having  to  go  upon  a  journey,  he  waited 
VOL.  I.— 14  209 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

patiently  until  the  sun  sank  into  the  western 
clouds  on  Sunday  evening  and  then  mounted  his 
horse.  But  he  had  gone  only  a  short  distance 
when  the  last  rays  gleamed  through  a  break  in 
the  clouds,  and  the  next  day  he  was  brought 
before  the  court  and  fined. 

This  striftness  was  observed  until  the  Revo 
lution  and  a  long  time  afterwards,  and  many  are 
still  living  who  can  remember  the  remains  of 
this  Sunday  severity.  Respectable  people  were 
not  supposed  to  be  seen  on  the  street  unless 
going  to  or  returning  from  church.  They  could 
not  stroll  to  the  water's  edge,  and  a  group  who 
stopped  to  talk  would  soon  be  dispersed  by  the 
constable.  A  young  French  officer,  at  the  time 
of  the  Revolution,  who  tried  to  dispel  the  tedium 
of  the  dismal  day  by  playing  on  his  flute  soon 
found  an  angry  mob  collected  in  front  of  the 
house,  and  was  obliged  by  his  landlord  to 
desist. 

Domestic  affections  and  enjoyments  were  not 
supposed  to  be  indulged  in  on  Sunday.  Some 
of  the  ministers,  as  Charles  Francis  Adams  tells 
us  in  his  excellent  paper  on  Puritan  church 
discipline,  refused  to  baptize  children  born  on 
Sunday,  because  there  was  a  belief  that  such 
children  must  have  been  conceived  on  Sunday. 
But  one  of  the  ministers  who  was  most  severe 
in  this  rule  was  finally  broken  from  it  when 

210 


Puritans  and   Philosophy 

his  own  wife  on  the  Sabbath  gave  birth  to 
twins.^ 

The  people  had  a  great  dislike  of  foreigners  and 
all  outside  influence.  They  were  very  original 
and  ingenious,  but  it  was  always  with  their  own 
material.  They  did  their  own  thinking  and 
their  own  work,  and  that  other  people  or  other 
nations  had  adopted  an  idea  or  a  method  was 
never  in  their  eyes  a  recommendation.  It  was 
a  most  wholesome  feeling  and  a  strong  incentive 
to  nationality  and  greatness.  They  were  ex 
tremely  proud  of  their  pure  English  blood,  and 
this  condition  continued  until  fifty  years  after 
the  Revolution,  when  the  influx  of  foreigners 
and  alien  ideas  began  to  break  up  their  homoge- 
neousness  and  destroyed  that  self-centred  spirit 
which  had  given  them  their  characteristic  great 
ness  and  power. 

When  Massachusetts  began  to  debate  whether 
she  should  adopt  the  German  system  of  educa 
tion  at  Harvard,  and  when  she  yielded  to  the 
policy  of  the  nation  in  encouraging  alien  immi 
grants  of  every  race  and  nation,  the  end  of  those 
peculiar  qualities  which  had  given  her  such  an 
ascendency  in  the  intellectual  and  literary  world 
was  near  at  hand. 


*  Proceedings  of  the  Massachusetts   Historical  Society, 
vol.  vi.  p.  494. 

211 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

The  indented  servants  who  were  so  numerous 
in  many  of  the  colonies  were  very  rare  in  Mas 
sachusetts  and  the  rest  of  New  England,  and 
there  were  none  of  the  convifts  and  bankrupts 
whom  Great  Britain  forced  on  some  of  the  other 
provinces.  Both  Virginia  and  New  England 
resisted  the  convict  and  pauper  system  which 
ruined  Maryland  and  other  commonwealths  so 
far  as  concerned  that  high  excellence  and  dis 
tinction  of  ability  and  character  which  form  the 
greatest  glory  of  a  community. 

It  is  a  noteworthy  faft  in  our  history  that 
during  the  Revolution  and  for  sixty  years  after 
wards  the  best  and  greatest  men  of  the  country 
were  produced  in  two  commonwealths,  Virginia 
and  Massachusetts ;  and  these  were  the  two 
which  were  more  homogeneous  than  any  of  the 
others  in  race,  religion,  and  general  ideas,  and 
had  kept  themselves  clean  of  convifts,  paupers, 
and  inferior  nationalities.  They  were  also  the 
most  prosperous  in  material  affairs,  and  increased 
their  population  very  rapidly.  Their  overflow 
spread  out  westward,  building  up  and  increasing 
the  peoples  of  communities  of  less  unity  and 
vigor.  Their  increase  by  the  natural  process  of 
births  was  more  rapid  than  it  has  since  been 
with  the  assistance  of  enormous  immigration. 

The  opinion  which  has  prevailed  of  recent 
years  that  the  people  of  beaten  and  inferior 

212 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

nationalities,  the  failures  and  incompetents  of 
Europe,  are  good  enough  material  with  which  to 
build  up  an  American  civilization  which  will 
carry  on  the  high  standard  of  intelligence,  lib 
erty,  and  republican  government  which  Massa 
chusetts  and  Virginia  did  so  much  to  create,  is 
unfortunately  not  supported  by  the  fadls  of  his 
tory.  The  Cavaliers  and  the  Puritans  were 
picked  men,  and  they  were  wise  enough  to 
value  their  purity  and  save  it  from  contami 
nation.  They  represented  the  two  great  oppos 
ing  parties  of  England,  and  they  were  the  best 
of  those  parties,  which,  though  conflicting,  were 
yet  in  essentials  very  much  alike.  It  was  fortu 
nate  that  the  two  commonwealths  which  they 
founded  preserved  their  purity  long  enough  for 
us  to  secure  some  of  its  results. 

After  the  year  1700  the  real  development 
of  Massachusetts  began.  Before  that  time  the 
rule  of  the  ecclesiastical  oligarchy  disfranchising 
the  majority  of  the  people,  murdering  Quakers 
and  witches,  and  banishing  the  most  high- 
spirited  and  enlightened  men  and  women  had 
not  been  representative  of  the  people  of  the 
province.  In  fa6l,  we  can  hardly  consider  it  as 
even  a  fair  exhibition  of  Puritanism,  for  it  repre 
sented  merely  a  few  extremists  who  were  in 
control  of  the  government.  But  after  1700, 
with  the  power  of  the  ministers  reduced,  with 
213 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

excesses  in  doctrine  and  superstition  steadily 
declining,  and  with  the  opinions  and  feelings  of 
the  majority  allowed  fair  expression,  the  colo 
nists  became  as  united,  orderly,  thrifty,  and  in 
telligent  a  body  of  men  as  could  be  found  in  the 
world. 

They  reasoned  as  keenly  as  ever  on  questions 
of  religion,  listened  to  their  endless  sermons 
and  lectures  with  the  same  devoted  attention, 
practised  austerities  and  abstained  from  pleasures. 
They  had  lost  their  independence,  but  they 
never  for  a  moment  gave  up  their  right  to  it. 
Nothing  but  the  impossibility  of  resistance  kept 
them  quiet.  They  regarded  the  country  as  their 
own  and  not  the  king's.  They  believed  that 
they  had  a  perfeft  right  to  independence,  and 
that  they  were  kept  from  it  only  by  superior 
force,  and  everything  done  by  the  British  gov 
ernment  tended  to  intensify  this  feeling. 

Manufacturing  in  the  colonies  was  discouraged 
by  the  British  government,  and  Massachusetts  at 
that  time  did  very  little  of  it.  Her  chief  busi 
ness  was  the  building  and  navigation  of  ships 
and  the  trade  in  fish.  She  had  some  trade  in 
furs  and  timber  and  a  slight  trade  in  grain  and 
cattle;  but  the  produces  of  the  ground  were  few 
and  the  soil  was  comparatively  barren. 

The  sea,  however,  was  for  the  Puritans  a  fer 
tile  field,  and  out  of  it  they  made  their  fortunes. 
214 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

There  have  seldom  been  better  ship-builders,  and 
their  descendants  are  still  among  the  best  sailors 
in  the  world.  It  was  on  the  shores  of  Massa 
chusetts  that  the  form  of  vessel  known  as  the 
schooner  was  invented,  and  from  the  same  source 
are  many  of  the  modern  improvements  in  the 
rigging  and  shape  of  hulls. 

They  began  to  build  ships  and  catch  fish  as 
soon  as  they  arrived.  Governor  Winthrop, 
within  a  year  after  the  colony  was  founded, 
built  a  vessel  of  thirty  tons  and  called  her  the 
Blessing  of  the  Bay.  According  to  a  report 
of  the  Board  of  Trade,  made  in  1721,  Massa 
chusetts  built  every  year  about  one  hundred  and 
fifty  vessels.  Most  of  them  were  sold  abroad, 
and  about  one  hundred  and  ninety  sail  were 
owned  in  the  colony.  These  employed  eleven 
hundred  sailors,  and  were  engaged  in  the  general 
carrying  trade  all  over  the  world.  Besides  these 
the  colony  possessed  about  one  hundred  and 
fifty  small  vessels,  which  employed  about  six 
hundred  men  and  were  engaged  in  catching  the 
fish  which  filled  the  waters  from  Cape  Cod  to 
the  banks  of  Newfoundland. 

Chastellux  in  travelling  through  Massachu 
setts  noticed  that  the  sailors  were  also  farmers. 
The  Puritan  sailors,  instead  of  being  the  des 
perate,  reckless  class  of  European  countries, 
closely  allied  to  criminals  and  knowing  no  other 
215 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

art  but  that  of  the  sea,  were  usually  respeftable 
men  who  whefi  ashore  followed  some  handicraft 
or  occupation.  Very  many  of  them  owned 
farms  which  they  cultivated  part  of  the  year, 
always  ready  to  follow  some  captain,  their 
neighbor,  to  the  fisheries.  The  captain  himself 
was  frequently  a  mechanic  or  a  farmer,  and  it 
was  not  uncommon  to  find  a  crew  of  excellent 
sailors  with  a  most  enlightened  knowledge  of 
their  duties,  not  one  of  whom  could  be  called  a 
seamati  by  profession.  A  farmer  often  owned 
a  sloop  or  a  schooner  which  he  had  perhaps 
assisted  in  building,  and  which  lay  anchored  in 
sight  of  his  barn. 

It  is  impossible  to  read  the  literature  of  Massa 
chusetts,  or  to  look  through  the  materials  of  her 
history,  without  being  impressed  with  the  mari 
time  instinfts  of  her  people.  Everything  savors 
of  the  salt  sea.  There  are  parts  of  Winthrop's 
journal  which  read  like  a  log-book.  Mingled 
with  his  accounts  of  wonderful  conversions  and 
miracles,  and  of  the  arrival  in  the  colony  of 
cows  and  mares,  as  well  as  of  learned  ministers, 
we  find  descriptions  of  voyages,  and  the  latitude 
and  longitude  to  which  vessels  were  driven  by 
storms ;  notes  on  the  wind  and  tide,  and  on  the 
price  of  salt  and  fish  and  other  articles  of  com 
merce.  Even  Judge  Sewall,  though  a  landsman, 
uses  technical  language  to  describe  the  move- 
216 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

ments  of  vessels,  and  mentions  several  instances 
when  he  was  invited,  as  a  mark  of  honor,  to 
drive  a  treenail  into  a  new  ship. 

Coming  down  into  the  present  century,  when 
the  great  literary  activity  of  Massachusetts  began, 
we  find  books  of  ocean  adventure  and  poems  of 
the  ocean,  and  we  find  that  nearly  all  the  fami 
lies  of  wealth  and  refinement  in  Eastern  Massa 
chusetts  are  connected  in  some  way  with  the 
shipping  interest,  and  have  recollections  and 
memorials  of  India  and  China.  We  find  mem 
bers  of  these  families  going  as  captains  of  vessels. 
Small  villages  on  the  coast  sometimes  contain 
the  homes  of  ten  or  fifteen  captains  of  foreign- 
going  ships.  A  careful  observer  cannot  now 
spend  a  summer  holiday  on  any  part  of  the  New 
England  coast  without  constantly  finding  memo 
ries  and  suggestions  of  a  great  maritime  life 
which  has  for  the  most  part  passed  away. 

Within  six  years  after  they  landed  the  Puritans 
founded  Harvard  College.  No  faft  of  their  his 
tory,  no  trait  of  their  character,  is  more  promi 
nent  than  their  zeal  for  learning.  It  has  often 
been  said  that  where  the  land  was  too  stony  to 
raise  corn  they  planted  school-houses  to  raise 
men. 

Education  was  encouraged  in  every  possible 
way.  Every  township  of  fifty  families  was 
directed  by  law  to  have  a  teacher,  and  when 
217 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

it  numbered  one  hundred  families  it  was  to 
have  a  grammar-school  to  prepare  boys  for 
Harvard.  For  a  long  time  this  law  was  irregu 
larly  enforced,  and  it  is  not  true,  as  has  been 
sometimes  said,  that  illiteracy  was  unknown  in 
Massachusetts.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  it, 
especially  in  early  times.  General  Putnam, 
who  was  born  at  Salem,  had  scarcely  any  school 
ing,  and  was  an  illiterate  man  all  his  life ;  and 
there  are  numerous  other  instances  of  boys  who 
seem  to  have  been  out  of  range  of  the  school- 
house. 

But  the  Puritan  mind  was  trained  in  many 
ways  besides  schools  and  colleges.  The  habit 
of  taking  notes  of  sermons,  the  week-day  meet 
ings  to  discuss  sermons,  the  lectures,  and  the 
frequent  religious  controversies  were  stimulating 
to  mental  growth.  The  Puritan  was  trained  by 
these  things  as  the  Virginian  by  sports,  social 
intercourse,  and  political  discussions.  Puritan 
life,  like  Virginia  life,  was  in  itself  an  educa 
tion. 

Nowhere  was  the  printing-press  more  suc 
cessful.  In  1719  Boston  had  five  printing  estab 
lishments  and  only  about  ten  thousand  inhab 
itants.  In  1750  it  had  five  newspapers,  the 
oldest  of  which  had  begun  its  career  in  1704. 
The  famous  Eliot  Indian  Bible  was  printed  in 
Boston,  and  those  who  examine  any  of  the  few 
218 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

remaining  copies  of  it  are  always  surprised  to 
find  it  such  a  beautiful  specimen  of  the  book 
maker's  art. 

Booksellers  often  made  fortunes.  Every  man 
who  had  a  new  idea  rushed  into  print  with  it. 
There  was  a  fierce  pamphlet  war  over  the  ques 
tion  of  inoculation  for  the  small-pox,  another, 
of  course,  over  the  witchcraft  proceedings,  and 
every  new  opinion  in  theology  had  its  pamphlet 
literature.  Sewall  mentions  a  little  pamphlet 
describing  a  case  of  witchcraft,  and  relates  that 
a  thousand  copies  of  it  were  sold  and  a  new 
edition  demanded. 

This  constant  attrition  of  opinions  had  its 
natural  result.  The  people  not  only  acquired 
knowledge,  but,  what  was  more  important,  their 
power  of  reasoning  and  expressing  themselves 
was  highly  developed.  The  excellence  of  New 
England  schools  and  colleges  has  never  been 
doubted,  and  the  secret  of  their  success  lies  not 
in  the  information  they  impart,  but  in  the  old 
Puritan  love  of  logic  and  their  habit  of  severe 
mental  discipline. 

The  gradual  decline  of  Puritanism  until,  after 
the  Revolution,  it  drifted  into  liberalism  and 
Unitarianism  is  difficult  to  trace,  because  it  was 
so  slow  and  imperceptible  that  no  definite  date 
or  turning-point  can  be  fixed  for  it.  The  year 
1800  is  in  a  general  way  near  enough,  and  it  is 
219 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

significant  that  it  was  not  until  about  that  time 
that  aftors  dared  show  themselves  in  Boston. 

The  laws  punishing  heresy  with  death  re 
mained  on  the  statute  book  for  a  long  time. 
Even  in  very  late  times  there  were  severe  laws 
for  the  regulation  of  the  Sabbath  and  against 
smoking  in  the  streets,  and  men  are  still  living 
who  can  remember  when  it  was  not  considered 
respeftable  to  be  out  of  the  house  on  Sunday 
afternoon.  But  these  obsolete  laws  and  few 
surviving  customs  were  merely  pieces  of  the  old 
shell ;  the  spirit  and  essential  part  of  Puritanism 
had  disappeared  long  before. 

So  long  as  that  terrible  incubus  of  Puritanism 
lay  upon  her  it  was  impossible  for  Massachu 
setts  to  rise  to  the  higher  flights  of  which  she  was 
capable.  In  the  Revolution  she  took  a  leading 
and  most  earnest  part,  which  every  school-boy 
knows.  Independence  was  the  ruling  passion 
of  her  life,  for  she  had  enjoyed  it  once  herself 
and  knew  its  sweets  by  having  been  deprived  of 
them.  But  at  that  period  she  did  not  produce 
as  many  great  men  as  Virginia,  and  she  never 
has  produced  military  geniuses.  Her  great  liter 
ary  activity  and  eminence,  as  well  as  her  great 
wealth  and  influence,  were  developed  some  years 
after  1800,  when  Virginia  was  declining. 

The  outburst  of  literature  in  Massachusetts, 
lasting  only  for  about  a  generation,  is  one  of  the 

220 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

strangest  phenomena  in  history.  It  was  con 
temporary  with  the  growth  of  Unitarianism 
and  closely  connected  with  it.  The  seeds  of 
Unitarianism  and  transcendentalism  were  always 
in  existence  in  Puritanism,  and  often  showed  a 
tendency  to  sprout  and  grow.  Mrs.  Hutchinson, 
when  she  announced  that  the  inward  feeling  of 
each  individual  was  the  proof  and  test  of  his 
justification,  touched  the  thought  that  was  so 
powerfully  developed  on  broader  lines  by  Chan- 
ning,  Emerson,  Parker,  and  Lowell. 

Franklin,  when  a  mere  youth  in  Boston,  a  few 
years  after  1700,  belonged  to  a  little  coterie  of 
deists  who  were  in  flagrant  opposition  to  the 
prevailing  opinion  of  the  community,  but  too 
few  and  weak  to  accomplish  anything.  He 
could  never  have  existed  in  the  Boston  atmos 
phere  of  that  time,  for  his  leaning  towards 
liberalism  and  science  was  abhorrent  to  the 
people,  and  even  his  boyish  attacks  on  the 
theology  of  the  province  got  both  himself  and 
his  brother  into  trouble.  He  fled  to  Philadel 
phia,  where,  although  thought  was  not  so  in 
tense  and  keen,  yet  every  opinion  was  freely 
tolerated. 

Both  Franklin  and  Mrs.  Hutchinson  have  had 

their  revenge;  for  after  the  year  1800  the  ideas 

of   Massachusetts   became   the   very  reverse  of 

what   they   had   been   a   hundred   years   before. 

221 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

The  most  intolerant  colony  became  the  most 
liberal  State  ;  the  home  of  bigotry  became  the 
home  of  free  thought.  From  Cotton  Mather  to 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  was  a  long  journey,  but 
it  was  the  path  that  Massachusetts  travelled. 
What  a  change  !  If  John  Cotton,  or  Increase 
Mather,  or  Cotton  Mather  could  have  known 
the  gentle,  all-tolerant  Emerson,  they  would 
surely  have  called  him  a  brand  from  hell. 

Various  reasons  have  been  assigned  for  the  rise 
of  Unitarianism  out  of  Puritanism  ;  but  the  only 
probable  explanation  seems  to  be  that  as  time 
passed  and  the  severity  of  the  Puritan  discipline 
relaxed,  and  superstition  and  the  terrors  of  hold 
ing  heretical  doftrine  died  out,  the  principle  of 
individual  judgment  in  religious  matters  which 
a  century  before  had  animated  Mrs.  Hutchinson 
and  her  followers  began  to  spread  again. 

Mrs.  Hutchinson's  party  had  been  very 
numerous ;  indeed,  had  almost  controlled  an 
election ;  and  although  they  were  formally 
suppressed,  many  of  them,  no  doubt,  continued 
to  believe  the  heresy  without  obtruding  it  on 
the  rest  of  the  people  in  a  way  that  would  get 
them  into  difficulties.  We  know  as  a  matter  of 
faft  that  in  Franklin's  time,  and  afterwards, 
there  were  a  few  more  or  less  avowed  Unitari 
ans  in  the  province. 

All  that  was  needed  was  to  have  certain  re- 
222 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

straints  removed  ;  for  the  minds  of  the  Puritans 
tended  naturally  towards  the  heresy  they  had 
stamped  upon.  They  were  reasoners  and  phi 
losophers  ;  they  loved  logic  and  loved  to  search 
for  causes.  They  had  built  up  Puritanism  as  a 
hard-headed  logical  system  based  on  a  belief  in 
devils  and  evil  spirits  and  the  doctrines  of  pre 
destination  and  eledlion. 

In  time,  however,  it  became  too  narrow  a 
field  for  them.  They  could  walk  all  round  it 
in  a  day  ;  they  had  thrashed  it  over  and  over 
until  they  were  tired  of  it,  and  the  superstitious 
parts  of  it  were  crumbling  away.  But  Mrs. 
Hutchinson's  philosophy  of  intuition — the  phi 
losophy  which  ignored  all  testimony  to  spiritual 
truth  except  that  of  individual  consciousness ; 
the  philosophy  which  allows  full  scope  to  reason 
and  piles  up  ideas  and  subtleties  in  infinite 
variety ;  the  philosophy  which  inspired  Plato, 
Descartes,  and  Berkeley,  as  well  as  Coleridge, 
Carlyle,  and  Emerson,  and  which  is  capable  of 
giving  more  comfort,  satisfaction,  and  happiness 
than  any  other  philosophy  the  world  has  ever 
known — was  for  the  Puritans  of  Massachusetts  a 
magnificent,  new,  and  unexplored  domain. 

Step  by  step,  cautiously,  with  fear  and  trem 
bling,  they  entered  this  paradise  where  every 
thing  seemed  so  free  and  pleasant  that  they 
thought  it  surely  must  be  sin.  But  they  moved 
223 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

in  so  slowly  that  most  of  them  were  unaware 
of  the  process,  until  by  1780  the  churches  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Boston  were  often  preaching 
the  new  doclrine  without  accusing  one  another 
of  heresy. 

Before  many  years,  however,  the  break  came. 
The  conservatives  realized  what  was  being  done, 
and  called  a  halt.  The  usual  bitter  controversies 
followed,  dividing  friend  from  friend  ;  the  usual 
disputes  for  the  possession  of  church  property  ; 
then  the  new  separated  from  the  old,  and  the 
thing  was  done. 

But  there  was  no  oligarchy  in  possession  of 
the  government  which  could  banish  the  new  to 
New  Hampshire  or  Rhode  Island.  They  were 
very  numerous,  and  they  stayed  and  leavened 
the  whole  community,  so  that  the  conservatives 
from  whom  they  had  separated  often  differed 
from  them  only  in  matters  of  form.  In  fail, 
the  new  had  set  them  all  free  ;  and  when  they 
found  that  no  terrible  signs  and  portents  fol 
lowed,  that  the  sun  still  shone,  the  birds  chirped, 
and  the  waves  still  beat  the  rocky  shores,  they 
broke  out  into  an  exuberance  of  joy  and  an  in 
tellectual  debauch  which  can  best  be  described 
by  saying  that  it  was  the  renaissance  of  Massa 
chusetts. 

The  skilful  and  sarcastic  pens  of  Emerson  and 
Lowell  have  given  us  some  of  the  details  of 
224 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

this  outburst  when  the  Puritan  mind  first  discov 
ered  that  it  could  use  the  stored-up  keenness  and 
subtlety  of  centuries  on  any  subject  it  pleased. 
From  the  streets  and  alleys  of  Boston,  from  the 
hill-side  towns,  and  from  the  villages  of  Cape 
Cod  came  forth  a  host  of  sects,  reformers,  and 
extraordinary  creatures,  maintaining  every  imagi 
nable  doctrine  and  absurdity. 

All  the  ills  of  life  would  be  abolished  if  every 
one  would  take  to  farming  ;  the  use  of  money 
is  the  cardinal  evil,  and  no  one  should  buy  or 
sell  ;  we  must  eat  pure  wheat  instead  of  bread  ; 
the  whole  difficulty  lies  in  stimulating  manures 
for  crops  instead  of  relying  on  the  natural  soil. 
Besides  these  there  were  the  non-resistance 
societies,  the  societies  of  "  come-outers,"  and 
the  man  who  established  a  society  for  the  pro 
tection  of  worms,  slugs,  and  mosquitoes,  and 
to  prevent  the  use  of  horses  ;  and  all  this  was 
followed  in  later  years  by  a  frantic  interest  in 
spiritualism,  Buddhism,  mesmerism,  and  phre 
nology. 

When  we  read  of  these  things,  and  especially 
of  the  man  who  would  abolish  buying  and  sell 
ing,  we  are  reminded  of  Sewall's  crusade  against 
wigs,  of  the  long  arguments  against  drinking 
healths,  and  of  the  sermon  John  Cotton  preached 
to  prove  that  it  was  wicked  for  a  tradesman  to 
buy  cheap  and  sell  dear.  Was  the  attempt  of 
VOL.  I.— 15  225 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

the  Puritans  to  establish  an  errorless  church  and 
state  very  much  different  from  the  attempt  of 
the  Brook  Farm  people  to  establish  a  community 
in  which  every  man  and  woman  should  be  a 
farm  laborer  for  three  hours  of  the  day  and  a 
poet  or  philosopher  for  the  rest  ?  One  was  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  the  other  of  the  nine 
teenth. 

That  same  intense  activity  of  mind,  that  same 
habit  of  sifting  everything  to  the  bottom,  that 
same  earnestness  of  purpose,  traits  which  in 
small  minds  run  to  trifles  or  absurdities  and  in 
large  minds  produce  the  abolitionists,  a  Parker, 
a  Channing,  an  Emerson,  or  a  Lowell,  were 
still  characteristics  of  Massachusetts,  just  as  they 
had  been  two  hundred  years  before. 

One  of  the  most  strange  results  of  the  re 
naissance  was  Thoreau,  who  carried  almost  to 
insanity  his  love  of  the  woods  and  fields,  in 
which  the  Puritan  imagination  had  seen  only 
signs  of  terror,  and  which  they  had  peopled 
with  devils  and  witches.  He  reacted  so  far 
that  he  got  drunk  with  nature,  and  he  is  a 
curious  connecting  link  between  the  really  great 
poetical  minds  like  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Holmes, 
and  Hawthorne,  who  were  always  thoroughly 
sound  and  sane,  and  the  unbalanced  freaks  and 
oddities  which  the  renaissance  produced. 

He  was  midway  between  them,  and  the  beau- 
226 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

t:ful  and  immortal  passages  in  his  books  are 
mingled  with  the  crudest  absurdities  of  a  mind 
that  had  just  cast  off  its  shackles.  His  fol 
lowers  in  the  same  peculiar  school  of  the  wor 
ship  of  nature,  Burroughs,  Bolles,  and  others, 
have  restored  the  methods  of  the  school  to 
sanity  ;  but  there  is  still,  in  spite  of  his  crudi 
ties,  a  great  deal  of  attraction  in  Thoreau  him 
self,  and  his  fame  is  increasing. 

At  the  time  of  this  renaissance,  which  may 
be  said  to  have  begun  about  the  year  1830,  the 
people  of  Massachusetts  had  been  a  compact, 
intensely  centralized,  and  united  community  for 
two  hundred  years.  They  had  received  no 
immigration  since  1640,  and  being  of  the  same 
race  and  religion,  they  had  become  more  homo 
geneous  in  thought  and  feeling  than  any  other 
body  of  people  on  the  continent.  They  had 
become  a  numerous  people,  filling  their  own 
province  and  overflowing  into  the  West,  and 
by  1830  there  was  a  large  class  which  had 
wealth,  leisure,  and  refinement. 

Generation  after  generation  had  been  trained 
in  the  enthusiasm  for  knowledge  and  education 
and  in  the  keen,  subtle  methods  of  thought 
which  made  the  literary  art  easily  learned. 
They  had  always  been  able  to  express  them 
selves  well.  Their  sermons  showed  it ;  and  in 
the  numerous  writings  of  Cotton  Mather  were 
227 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

to  be  found  a  power  of  statement  which  at 
times  was  almost  literary  genius.  Franklin 
took  him  for  the  model  of  his  own  matchless 
style.  Anne  Bradstreet  had  attempted  some 
ambitious  poems,  and  not  a  few  of  the  Puritan 
writers  indulged  themselves  at  times  in  verse. 
Although  none  of  these  productions  rose  to  the 
level  of  poetry,  they  were  usually  well  con 
structed  and  clever ;  while  in  the  other  colonies 
similar  efforts  were,  with  a  few  exceptions,  un 
mitigated  trash. 

Under  these  conditions,  as  soon  as  their  minds 
were  free,  they  broke  out  on  all  sides  and  began 
to  write  the  literature  of  Europe  as  well  as  of 
their  own  country.  Prescott  wrote  immortal 
works  on  the  history  of  the  Spanish  people  and 
their  conquests  in  Mexico  and  Peru  ;  Motley, 
the  history  of  the  Netherlands  ;  and  these  books 
became  classics  for  the  whole  world.  Bancroft 
took  the  United  States  for  his  theme,  and  Park- 
man  the  contest  between  England  and  France 
for  the  possession  of  the  North  American  con 
tinent.  The  range  of  thought  and  power  in  the 
works  of  these  four  men  alone  is  very  significant 
and  impressive. 

In  Longfellow  we  see  the  same  breadth  and 

force.      A  large  number  of  his  best  poems  deal 

with   the  history  and  episodes  of  New  England 

and   America,    but   many    reach    out  across   the 

228 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Atlantic  to  Germany,  England,  and  Italy,  and 
he  made  one  of  the  best  translations  of  Dante. 
Lowell  and  Hawthorne  also  show  the  same 
characteristics.  Massachusetts  literature,  like  her 
ships  of  that  time,  was  never  content  until  it  had 
sailed  the  seven  seas. 

Her  newly  awakened  power  found  another 
theme  ready  to  its  hand  which  was  perhaps 
even  more  congenial  than  literature.  The  great 
question  of  slavery,  and  whether  it  should  be 
extended  or  restricted,  was  looming  up  in  its 
most  dangerous  aspefts  and  threatening  to  wreck 
the  Union.  The  South  was  for  extending  it 
into  the  Western  territories  and  making  it  a 
national  institution  ;  the  North  was  for  confining 
it  to  the  South.  But  even  the  North  did  not 
wish  to  go  beyond  the  question  of  restriction  or 
extension.  The  total  abolition  of  slavery  was 
a  forbidden  subject,  and  the  mobs  in  every  city 
were  ready  to  kill  the  man  who  advocated  it, 
and  burn  the  building  in  which  he  spoke. 

But  the  thorough-going  Puritan  who  had 
believed  in  extirpating  root  and  branch  the  most 
innocent  heresies  could  not  rest  satisfied  with 
such  a  weak  compromise,  especially  of  a  ques 
tion  which  involved  moral  right  and  wrong. 
The  abolitionists — the  Garrisons,  the  Phillipses, 
and  the  Whittiers — were  merely  the  Cottons,  the 
Mathers,  the  Endicotts,  and  the  Winthrops  trans- 
229 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

formed  by  the  changes  of  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years ;  and  they  never  had  had  before  such  an 
opportunity  to  use  their  ancient  power. 

As  we  read  the  history  of  their  onset,  we  are 
reminded  of  a  trained  pugilist  wading  into  a 
crowd  of  ordinary  men  and  striking  right  and 
left  his  terrible  blows.  Every  stroke  crushes  a 
viftim  to  the  earth,  and  the  rest  melt  away 
with  fear.  The  men  of  Massachusetts  who 
could  torture  a  heretic  into  confession  by  weeks 
and  months  of  questioning  now  turned  to  look 
the  whole  American  people  in  the  face  and 
stretch  their  conscience  on  the  rack.  There 
never  have  been  such  piercing  inquisitors ;  for 
the  inquisitors  of  the  Church  of  Rome  infli&ed 
their  torture  on  the  outward  body  and  often 
left  the  mind  triumphant  in  its  error ;  but  the 
intellect  of  the  abolitionist  reached  within  and 
gripped  the  soul  with  a  power  that  converted 
the  heretic  into  a  fighting  proselyte  for  the  new 
faith. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  features  of  the 
Massachusetts  literature  was  its  completeness. 
Although  it  lasted  only  for  a  generation,  it  was 
complete  in  all  the  departments  of  poetry,  ro 
mance,  oratory,  philosophy,  history,  and  theol 
ogy,  like  the  national  literature  of  France,  Eng 
land  or  any  country  which  is  in  the  fullest  sense 
of  the  word  a  nation,  and  by  a  long-continued 
230 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

homogeneousness  of  population  has  settled  into 
a  distinct  type  of  people  who  think  and  aft 
together  as  a  unit. 

Another  striking  characteristic  besides  its  orig 
inality  and  force  was  the  early  age  at  which  its 
writers  matured  and  produced  their  best  works. 
Even  the  historians,  whose  tasks,  depending  on  re 
search,  usually  require  a  longer  time,  were  very 
forward  in  their  fame.  Prescott  finished  "  Fer 
dinand  and  Isabella"  in  his  forty-first  year,  and 
Motley  "The  Dutch  Republic"  in  his  forty- 
second.  The  fame  of  Longfellow  and  Bryant 
was  made  before  they  were  forty.  Their  great 
est  poems  were  written  before  that  age.  Bryant's 
"  Thanatopsis"  was  written  when  he  was  eigh 
teen.  Everett  was  drawing  large  audiences  at 
nineteen.  Lowell  wrote  the  "  Biglow  Papers" 
at  twenty-eight,  and  Holmes  his  poem  on  "  Old 
Ironsides"  at  twenty-one.  The  forces  that  in 
spired  them  were  evidently  strong,  rapid,  and 
complete. 

Why  was  it  that  a  literature  of  so  much 
power  and  genius,  so  complete  in  all  its  forms, 
could  not  last  like  the  literature  of  England,  in 
which  we  find  a  steady  and  continuous  pro 
duction  of  literary  men  of  a  high  order  for  several 
hundred  years,  every  decade  producing  several 
of  them  with  remarkable  regularity  ? 

The  literary  men  of  Massachusetts  were  all 
231 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

born  between  the  years  1780  and  1823,*  anc^ 
they  are  now  all  dead,  without  leaving  a  single 
successor  worthy  to  represent  them.  In  the 
long  perspective  of  Massachusetts  history  they 
are  a  mere  isolated  patch,  and  the  period  of 
their  aftivity  and  influence  is  completely  covered 
by  fifty  years. 

Was  it  that  this  outburst  was  caused  merely 
by  the  artificial  stimulant  of  the  sudden  change 
from  total  repression  to  absolute  freedom  which 
attended  the  rise  of  Unitarianism  acting  on  a 
people  long  accustomed  to  a  love  of  knowledge 
and  to  the  exercise  of  their  minds  in  subtle  ex 
pressions  and  delicate  distinctions  similar  to  the 
methods  of  the  highest  literature  ?  This  is  the 
explanation  which  naturally  first  occurs  to  one, 
but  it  is  not  altogether  satisfactory. 

Unitarianism  still  exists  and  apparently  all  the 
other  conditions.  The  people  have  grown 
richer,  and  developed  their  industries  and  enter 
prises  ;  culture  is  more  generally  diffused ;  and 
all  this  one  should  suppose  would  be  an  assist 
ance  to  literature.  England  has  grown  richer 


*  Charming,  1780;  Everett,  1794;  Bryant,  1794;  Pres- 
cott,  1796;  Bancroft,  18005  Emerson,  18035  Hawthorne, 
1804;  Longfellow,  1807  5  Whittier,  1807  ;  Holmes,  1809; 
Parker,  1810;  Sumner,  1811;  Phillips,  1811;  Motley, 
1814;  Lowell,  18195  Parkman,  1823. 
232 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

and  developed  her  industries,  and  has  been  doing 
so  for  several  hundred  years,  and  all  the  time 
her  literature  has  been  going  on. 

Indeed,  it  is  generally  supposed  that  the  de 
velopment  of  wealth  and  ease  is  beneficial  to 
the  fine  arts.  Education  is  as  thorough  to-day 
in  Massachusetts  as  it  was  before  1825.  In  faft, 
it  is  believed  to  be  more  thorough,  more  gen 
erally  diffused,  and  more  liberal  and  enlightened. 
There  are  no  signs  of  stupidity  around  Boston 
Harbor.  The  people  read  and  appreciate  good 
books  as  much  as  ever,  and  have  plenty  of 
money  to  buy  them.  All  the  conditions  seem 
favorable  to  literature  of  a  high  order,  and  it  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  the  mere  change,  the 
sudden  access  of  freedom,  was  the  sole  cause, 
and  that  a  literature  so  powerful  and  complete 
in  all  its  departments  passed  away  because  the 
novelty  of  the  change  wore  off. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  that  the  sudden  free 
dom  was  the  occasion  and  the  opportunity  which 
gave  the  natural  powers  of  the  Puritans  a  chance 
to  spread  out  into  literature.  But  after  the 
freshness  of  the  change  had  passed,  those  natural 
powers  must  have  still  existed.  The  freaks  and 
oddities  may  have  owed  all  their  vitality  to  the 
mere  change ;  but  can  we  believe  that  such 
substantial  genius  as  that  of  Longfellow,  Lowell, 
Holmes,  Hawthorne,  and  Emerson  was  merely 
233 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

the  result  of  an  hysterical  excitement,  without 
other  or  deeper  causes  ? 

What  may  be  the  real  fundamental  causes  of 
the  growth  of  literature  in  a  nation  is  of  course 
hard  to  discover,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  they 
will  forever  defy  the  power  of  human  analysis. 
But  we  may  fairly  infer  that,  whatever  the  usual 
fundamental  causes  may  be,  they  were  the  ones 
that  produced  the  Massachusetts  literature,  be 
cause  in  its  quality,  power,  and  variety  it  was 
like  the  best  literature  of  the  greatest  nations. 

The  attempt  to  explain  its  cessation  by  saying 
that  in  the  last  fifty  years  all  the  best  minds  of 
Massachusetts  have  emigrated  to  the  Western 
States  is  of  no  avail,  for  this  same  emigration 
was  going  on  at  the  time  the  literature  was 
produced.  Massachusetts  was  overflowing  her 
boundaries  in  the  fifty  years  after  the  Revolution 
as  much  as,  if  not  more  than,  she  has  done  since  ; 
and  the  enormous  emigration  out  of  England  to 
her  colonies  has  been  contemporaneous  with 
England's  greatest  literary  activity.  In  faft,  the 
population  of  Massachusetts  increased  more  rap 
idly  and  gave  her  more  overflow  in  her  great 
literary  period  than  it  has  since. 

Nor  does  it  afford  an  explanation  to  say  that 
the  men  who  would  have  continued  Massachu 
setts'  literature  were  all  killed  in  the  civil  war. 
The  men  born  between  1848  and  1861  were 
234 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

too  young  to  go  to  the  war.  These  men  are 
now  nearly  all  past  forty  years  old ;  and  if  a  man 
has  literary  genius  in  him,  he  usually  shows  it 
before  his  fortieth  year.  The  great  literary  men 
of  Massachusetts  made  their  reputations  before 
they  were  forty. 

Moreover,  the  men  who  went  to  the  war 
were  not  all  killed.  Thousands  of  them  returned 
stronger  and  abler  in  every  way  for  the  expe 
rience  ;  and  it  would  indeed  be  extraordinary  if 
the  war  had  killed  every  one  who  had  the  liter 
ary  instinct  among  a  class  who,  as  a  rule,  are 
not  inclined  to  become  soldiers. 

The  only  explanation  which  seems  broad  and 
deep  enough  to  fill  the  situation  is  that  the  great 
influx  of  foreign  immigrants,  Irish,  Germans,  and 
French,  who  since  the  year  1825  have  poured 
into  Massachusetts  in  an  increasing  stream  until 
fifty  per  cent,  of  her  population  is  foreign,  has 
broken  up  the  continuity  and  homogeneousness 
of  her  population  and  destroyed  the  nation 
ality  and  unity  of  feeling  which  inspired  her 
literature. 

At  the  time  her  literary  men  were  produced 
Massachusetts  was  a  nation,  and,  though  small, 
had  all  the  distinctive  features  of  nationality 
and  a  settled  type  of  thought  and  feeling  like 
England  or  France.  This  condition  had  been 
produced  by  a  steady,  uninterrupted  develop- 
235 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

ment  of  two  hundred  years  among  a  people  of 
the  same  race  and  religion,  who  resented  every 
outside  interference  and  influence. 

After  the  year  1640,  when  immigration  to 
Massachusetts  ceased,  her  development  was  en 
tirely  a  native  growth,  and  her  native  feeling 
was  reinforced  by  the  peculiarities  of  her  reli 
gion  and  government.  She  not  only  rejected 
foreigners  who  were  not  of  her  people's  race, 
but  she  rejected  even  Englishmen  who  were  not 
of  her  way  of  thinking,  and  banished  Roger 
Williams  and  Anne  Hutchinson  and  persecuted 
the  Quakers.  Whatever  may  have  been  her 
faults  in  this  direction,  her  people  grew  up 
united,  pureblooded,  and  homogeneous,  and 
when  the  year  1780  arrived  they  had  been 
homogeneous  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  and 
formed  the  most  intensely  native  and  individu 
alized  commonwealth  in  America. 

So  far  as  can  be  discovered,  it  is  this  national 
ized  condition  which  produces  literature  of 
genius,  rounded  and  complete  in  all  its  depart 
ments  like  that  of  Massachusetts.  Such  litera 
ture  is  not  merely  the  expression  of  the  man 
who  writes  it ;  it  is  the  expression  of  the  deep, 
united  feeling  of  his  people.  The  great  schools 
of  art  and  literature  have  all  been  national 
schools,  the  work  of  homogeneous  peoples. 

The  great  ideas  we  have  inherited  from  the 
236 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

past — indeed,  all  of  value  that  we  have  inherited 
from  it — are  the  result  of  nationality.  The  two 
nations  of  antiquity  to  which  we  owe  most  are 
the  Jews  and  the  Greeks.  Our  noblest  inspira 
tions  in  religion,  morals,  philosophy,  literature, 
art,  and  government  come  from  them,  and  they 
were  of  all  peoples  the  most  thoroughly  homo 
geneous.  If  we  pass  down  through  history  to 
collect  instances  of  genius,  we  find  them  only  in 
communities  intensely  nationalized  and  homo 
geneous,  like  England  or  France. 

The  things  that  are  worth  preserving  through 
the  ages,  the  immortal  things,  cannot  be  pro 
duced  by  a  man  who  is  isolated  from  his  fellows 
or  unsupported  by  them,  or  lacks  their  sym 
pathy  ;  and  the  greatest  things  usually  come 
from  men  who  have  a  nation  behind  them.  The 
supremely  great  man  is  the  produ6l  of  the  people 
among  whom  he  was  born  and  lived.  A  whole 
host  of  dramatists  lead  up  to  Shakespeare  and 
surround  him.  They  are  all  like  him  :  all  are 
on  the  same  lines  and  of  the  same  tone,  but 
none  so  great.  He  and  they  spoke  the  thoughts 
and  interpreted  the  feelings  of  the  thousands  of 
Englishmen  among  whom  they  lived  ;  and  he 
spoke  best.  Every  investigation  into  the  origin 
of  the  great  ideas  and  movements  of  the  past, 
whether  they  have  been  shown  in  the  life  of 
one  man  or  in  the  lives  of  ten  men,  reveals  a 
237 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

deep  substratum  of  support  among  the  people, 
going  back  in  most  instances  for  many  gener 
ations. 

One  of  the  most  important  and  strongest  ele 
ments  in  the  Massachusetts  literature  was  the 
humor  which  pervaded  a  large  part  of  it, — a 
humor  which  is  more  classical  and  more  closely 
allied  to  wit  than  the  modern  humor  of  Mark 
Twain  and  others.  It  was  the  outgrowth  into 
literature  of  the  natural  humor  of  the  masses  of 
the  people  which,  as  already  shown,  had  been 
characteristic  of  them  from  the  early  colonial 
times.  It  had  grown  and  developed  until  it  had 
become  a  national  and  typical  trait,  sharpened 
and  intensified  without  the  slightest  interference 
from  foreign  sources  by  two  hundred  years  of 
use,  and  then  it  took  the  form  of  genius.  Low 
ell  seized  upon  it  for  the  "  Biglow  Papers,"  in 
many  respedls  the  most  original  production  of 
Massachusetts  literature  ;  it  inspired  Holmes, 
and  in  greater  or  less  degree  many  of  the  others 
except  Longfellow,  whom  it  scarcely  touched. 

Why  should  it  and  the  rest  of  the  literary 
instinct  have  perished  so  suddenly,  unless  the 
swarms  of  Irish  and  other  aliens  broke  its  con 
tinuity  and  destroyed  the  united  feeling  of  the 
people  who  had  created  and  were  continuing  it  ? 
In  a  horseback  journey  through  New  England 
some  years  ago  one  soon  learned  to  tell  at  a 
238 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

glance  the  house  where  an  Irishman  or  other  for 
eigner  lived  by  the  dirt  and  degradation  which 
surrounded  it,  in  striking  contrast  to  the  immacu 
late  neatness  of  the  natives  ;  and  the  foreigners 
have  poured  mud  into  the  pure  stream  of  genius 
which  was  Massachusetts'  greatest  glory. 

The  literary  men  of  Massachusetts  were  all 
born  and  passed  through  their  impressionable 
age  during  a  period  of  forty  years  in  which 
the  people  of  Massachusetts  were  more  homo 
geneous  than  they  were  in  any  other  forty  years, 
either  before  or  since.  It  is  certainly  rather 
significant  that  no  man  born  since  1825  and 
brought  up  in  the  surroundings  created  by  the 
immigrants  has  been  able  to  reach  anything 
approaching  to  the  literary  eminence  which  was 
reached  by  a  dozen  men  born  during  the  pre 
vious  thirty  years.  The  time  has  been  ample. 
Men  born  between  1830  and  1840  would  now 
be  fifty  or  sixty  years  old. 

If  we  look  at  English  1'iterature  we  find  that 
twelve  or  thirteen  distinguished  characters  have 
been  born  and  raised  to  greatness  since  1825: 
George  Meredith  (1828),  Rossefti  (1828), 
Ingelow  (1830),  McCarthy  (1830),  Farrar 
(1831),  "Owen  Meredith"  (1831),  Edwin 
Arnold  (1832),  William  Morris  (1834),  Swin 
burne  (1837),  Green  (1837),  Lecky  (1838), 
Morley  (1838),  Besant  (1838),  Black  (1841), 
239 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Buchanan  (1841),  Stevenson  (1850),  not  to 
mention  many  others  of  minor  and  doubtful 
power. 

In  other  words,  English  literature  has  moved 
on  in  its  regular  course  under  the  influence  of 
general  causes.  But  the  literature  of  Massachu 
setts  has  stopped.  The  old  line  of  greatness  is 
not  continued.  It  is  impossible  to  find  for  it 
any  competent  successor.  Massachusetts  has 
brought  forth  no  man  since  that  time  who  has 
written  a  poem  equal  to  Morris's  tf  Earthly 
Paradise,"  or  Rossetti's  "  Blessed  Damosel,"  or 
Edwin  Arnold's  "  Light  of  Asia,"  or  who  has 
made  such  an  impression  on  his  time  as  Swin 
burne  or  even  Jean  Ingelow.  Nor  has  Massa 
chusetts  brought  forth  an  historian  like  Lecky, 
Green,  or  McCarthy,  or  a  novelist  like  Stevenson 
or  Besant. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  old  order  compared 
very  favorably  with  their  contemporaries  in 
England.  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Hawthorne,  and 
Holmes  are  read  and  admired  to-day  in  England 
as  much  as,  if  not  more  than,  in  America  ;  and 
Longfellow  is  credited  with  being  more  generally 
popular  in  England  than  Tennyson.  But  their 
successors,  even  in  the  United  States  at  large, 
are  weak  and  puny,  and  their  faces  in  the  pictures 
we  have  of  them  are  a  strange  contrast  to  the 
vigorous  lines  in  the  features  of  the  old  order  of 
240 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

Massachusetts.  They  are  simpering,  superficial, 
and  super-refined ;  devoted  to  mere  dialect  stories 
or  strained  descriptions  of  ephemeral  or  local 
phases.  A  deep,  strong  passion  or  a  bold  grasp 
at  the  eternal  verities  frightens  them  out  of  their 
wits. 

The  broad,  deep  sympathy  of  Longfellow,  the 
keen  wit  of  Holmes,  the  uncontrollable  humor 
of  Lowell,  the  tender,  exquisite  sentiment  of 
Hawthorne,  as  well  as  the  virile  imagination 
of  Stevenson,  the  wild  fancy  of  Haggard,  or 
Kipling's  lust  for  nature,  they  seem  to  think  not 
quite  correft.  They  prefer  needles  and  pins  to 
broadswords. 

In  his  recent  book  on  emigration  and  immigra 
tion,  Mr.  R.  M.  Smith  fixes  the  period  of  native 
increase  in  America  from  1783  to  1820.*  It 
was  in  one  sense  longer  than  that,  and  should  be 
extended  back  for  some  years  in  most  of  the 
colonies,  and  in  Massachusetts  back  to  1640. 
But  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  period  he  has 
fixed  was  the  period  of  the  most  nearly  exclu 
sively  native  growth  and  of  the  intensest  native 
feeling,  the  time  when  the  native  feeling  of  pre 
vious  years  culminated,  especially  in  Massachu 
setts.  In  fixing  this  period  Mr.  Smith  was  not 
thinking  of  the  literature  of  the  country,  for  he 

*  Smith's  "  Emigration  and  Immigration,"  p.  37. 
VOL.  I.-i6  241 


Puritans  and  Philosophy 

says  nothing  about  it ;  and  it  is  important  to 
observe  that  his  period  almost  exaftly  covers  the 
births  of  the  men  who  made  our  only  national 
and  complete  literature. 


CHAPTER    III 

THE    LAND    OF    STEADY    HABITS 

/CONNECTICUT,  like  Massachusetts,  was 
made  up  of  two  colonies,  and  at  first  con 
sisted  only  of  a  settlement  of  people  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Hartford.  Afterwards  there 
was  another  colony  called  New  Haven  estab 
lished  at  the  place  of  that  name.  The  two 
were  somewhat  different  in  opinions,  like  the 
two  colonies  of  Massachusetts,  but  were  united 
in  1662  into  one  colony,  to  which  the  name 
Connecticut  was  given. 

The  colony  at  Hartford  was  founded  by  some 

Massachusetts    Puritans   who    were   very   much 

opposed  to  the  tyrannical  ecclesiastical  oligarchy 

which  disfranchised  the  majority  of  the  people, 

243 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

and  if  they  had  not  gone  away  voluntarily 
they  would  probably  have  soon  been  banished. 
Hooker,  their  leader,  was  an  able  man,  but  not 
so  pugnacious  and  intolerant  as  the  Massachu 
setts  ministers,  and  he  believed  in  a  Puritan 
democracy  as  the  proper  form  of  government. 
John  Cotton,  on  the  other  hand,  had  said,  "  De 
mocracy  I  do  not  conceive  that  God  did  ordain 
as  a  fit  government  either  for  church  or  com 
monwealth." 

So  Hooker,  Haynes,  Ludlow,  and  other  re- 
fraftory  and  democratic  spirits  led  a  number  of 
those  who  were  like-minded  through  the  woods 
to  the  Connecticut  River  in  the  year  1636, 
driving  their  cattle  before  them.  Soon  after 
reaching  the  place  that  became  Hartford,  Hooker 
preached  a  sermon  in  which  he  maintained  that 
the  free  consent  of  the  people  was  the  source 
of  all  authority,  and  this  was  certainly  the  form 
of  government  he  and  his  followers  estab 
lished. 

This  migration  was  composed  of  three  com 
plete  Massachusetts  town  organizations, — Dor 
chester,  Watertown,  and  Newtown,  which  was 
afterwards  called  Cambridge.  When  trans 
planted  within  a  few  miles  of  each  other  on 
the  banks  of  the  Connecticut,  they  became 
Windsor,  Hartford,  and  Wethersfield.  The 
Puritans,  as  we  have  already  observed,  advanced 
244 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

into  the  wilderness  not  by  isolated  individual 
effort  but  by  towns. 

Not  only  three  organized  towns  but  three 
organized  churches  went  with  Hooker  and  his 
men  into  the  woods.  Hooker  was  a  man  of 
great  stature  and  most  powerful  voice,  which  he 
used  to  its  full  compass  in  preaching.  He  was 
a  popular  orator  of  the  pulpit,  and  whenever  he 
visited  Boston,  crowds,  which  were  no  doubt 
largely  composed  of  the  disfranchised,  went  to 
hear  him.  We  know  little  of  his  individu 
ality  ;  his  life  at  Hartford  was  an  unbroken 
record  of  taft,  mild  government,  and  strong 
influence. 

Haynes,  like  so  many  of  the  Puritans,  had 
been  a  man  of  fortune  and  position  in  England, 
where  he  was  said  to  have  had  an  estate  worth 
a  thousand  pounds  a  year.  He  had  also  been 
governor  of  Massachusetts,  and  was  the  first 
governor  of  Connecticut.  Little  is  known  of 
him  or  of  Ludlow,  who  was  a  lawyer,  rather 
erratic  and  troublesome,  and  who  finally  went  to 
Virginia. 

The  dominant  party  in  Massachusetts  ex 
pressed  great  regret  at  the  departure  of  these 
people  •  they  liked  not,  they  said,  to  see  the 
colony  so  much  weakened,  and  they  reminded 
the  emigrants  that  the  removal  of  a  candlestick 
was  a  great  judgment.  But  nothing  could  stop 
245 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

the  movement.  Efforts  to  accomplish  it  began 
to  be  made  in  1634  an<^  were  completed  in 
1637,  when  about  eight  hundred  Puritans  had 
settled  near  Hartford. 

The  three  towns  were  praftically  three  inde 
pendent  States,  and  they  joined  together  to 
create  a  general  government  over  themselves. 
Each  town  elected  two  men  whom  they  called 
magistrates,  and  the  body  of  six  thus  formed  was 
the  General  Court,  which  at  first  met  in  turn  at 
the  towns. 

Each  town  decided  for  itself  which  of  its 
citizens  should  have  the  right  to  vote.  The 
privilege  was  given  to  all  who  had  been  ad 
mitted  as  inhabitants,  and  was  never  confined 
to  members  of  the  church.  Like  the  General 
Court*  in  Massachusetts,  the  magistrates  per 
formed  the  double  function  of  a  legislature  and 
a  court  of  law.  Very  shortly,  however,  this 
General  Court  met  permanently  at  Hartford,  and 
the  charafter  of  the  government  was  somewhat 
changed,  each  town  electing  three  deputies,  who 
met  and  elected  the  six  magistrates. 

The  towns  created  the  general  government 
of  the  colony  very  much  as  the  States  of  the 
Union  created  the  general  government  of  the 
United  States  ;  and  curiously  enough  the  system 
raised  the  question  of  town  rights  in  very  much 
the  same  way  that  the  government  made  by  the 
246 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

people  of  the  thirteen*  original  States  raised  the 
question  of  State  rights. 

In  1639  f^e  c°l°ny  drew  up  for  itself  a 
written  constitution,  the  first  written  consti 
tution  that  had  ever  been  prepared  on  American 
soil,  most  strikingly  liberal  in  its  provisions  and 
establishing  the  free  suffrage  and  democracy 
which  Hooker  admired.  There  was  no  men 
tion  of  the  king  or  of  allegiance  to  him,  and 
the  only  oath  of  allegiance  was  one  of  allegiance 
to  the  colony. 

But  although  the  people  were  thorough  be 
lievers  in  democratic  government,  and  had  no 
laws  designed  to  create  an  ecclesiastical  despot 
ism  like  that  of  Massachusetts  from  which  they 
had  fled,  yet  in  Connecticut  church  and  state 
were  in  a  certain  sense  one.  They  were  one 
not  so  much  by  law  as  by  tacit  consent,  and  for 
the  reason  that  the  large  majority  of  the  voters 
were  members  of  the  church,  and  were  at  first 
very  much  in  accord  with  each  other  in  religious 
matters.  The  Connecticut  ministers  were  al 
ways  consulted  in  civil  affairs,  and  the  same  men 
settled  both  civil  and  ecclesiastical  questions  in 
the  same  public  meeting. 

The     dominant    party    had,    however,    little 

or    none  of   that    hard,   intolerant,    and    prying 

spirit  which  made  the  history  of  Massachusetts. 

They  were  less  intense,  and  though  of  deter- 

247 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

mined  and  steadfast  purpose,  less  learned  and 
aggressive  than  the  people  of  the  colony  from 
which  they  migrated ;  for  whatever  we  may 
think  of  the  cruelty  and  bigotry  of  Massa 
chusetts,  her  system  was  a  school  of  training 
which,  when  the  bigoted  part  of  it  passed  away, 
produced  greater  results  and  greater  men  than 
are  to  be  found  in  Connecticut. 

The  Puritans  who  founded  New  Haven  came 
direft  from  England.  They  touched  at  Boston, 
but  resisted  all  persuasions  to  remain,  and  under 
their  leaders,  Davenport  and  Eaton,  passed  on 
to  New  Haven.  So  far  as  their  sympathies 
and  opinions  were  concerned,  they  might  very 
well  have  stayed  in  Boston,  for  they  were  of  pre 
cisely  the  same  sort  as  the  Boston  Puritans,  and 
they  made  of  New  Haven  a  little  Massachusetts. 

They  first  established  a  church,  and  then  the 
church  created  the  state.  They  relied  on  a 
passage  of  Scripture  which  speaks  of  wisdom 
having  built  her  house  and  having  hewn  out  her 
seven  pillars,  from  which  they  inferred  that 
church  and  state  should  rest  on  seven  godly 
men. 

Like  the  Massachusetts  Puritans,  one  of  their 
first  enactments  limited  to  church  members  the 
holding  of  office  and  the  right  to  vote.  The 
word  of  God,  they  declared,  was  to  be  the  only 
guide  of  public  officers  and  judges.  They  had 
248 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

no  system  of  trial  by  jury  ;  they  could  find,  they 
said,  no  mention  of  it  in  the  Old  Testament. 

Such  was  the  town  of  New  Haven,  resting 
on  seven  Puritan  pillars,  who  combined  in 
themselves  the  legislature,  the  governor,  and  the 
court  of  law,  and  were  fully  persuaded  that  the 
rule  of  the  many  is  not  a  good  thing.  The 
neighboring  towns,  Milford  and  Guilford,  were 
in  the  same  way  composed  of  seven  pillars,  and 
followed  closely  New  Haven  as  their  model. 

But  in  none  of  these  governments  was  the 
King  of  England  named.  Like  the  people  of 
Connecticut,  the  New  Haven  colonists  quietly 
assumed  all  the  attributes  of  independence. 
They  also  resembled  Connecticut  in  having 
no  title  whatever  to  the  land  they  occupied. 
They  took  the  best  they  could  find,  and  trusted 
to  the  future  and  good  luck  to  secure  all  their 
rights. 

New  Haven  began  her  existence  in  1639. 
Five  years  afterwards  Milford,  Guilford,  and 
Stamford  formed  with  New  Haven  a  confederacy 
of  towns,  and  in  a  few  years  Branford  and 
Southhold  were  added.  This  union,  known 
thereafter  as  the  colony  of  New  Haven,  had  a 
constitution,  a  governor,  deputy  governor,  and 
three  magistrates,  and  each  town  sent  two 
deputies.  The  disfranchised,  who  were  a 
majority  in  New  Haven  and  not  quite  so  many 
249 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

in  the  other  towns,  were  kindly  allowed  the 
right  to  inherit  property  and  the  right  to  engage 
in  trade. 

The  dominant  party  in  New  Haven  had  the 
meddlesome  inquisitorial  spirit  which  charafter- 
ized  Massachusetts  and  was  so  conspicuously 
absent  at  Hartford.  These  were  the  two  kinds 
of  Puritans.  The  General  Court  at  New  Haven 
felt  that  they  had  an  oversight  of  everybody's 
business,  and  could  investigate  their  inmost 
thoughts,  especially  if  those  thoughts  were  sup 
posed  to  be  corrupt.  Men  and  women  were 
brought  before  the  court  to  be  punished  for  in 
delicate  remarks  made  in  private,  for  repeating 
an  absurd  request  made  in  a  prayer  which  had 
been  overheard,  and  for  improper  kissing.  The 
nearest  approach  to  anything  of  this  sort  in 
Hartford  was  the  punishment  of  Peter  Bussa- 
ker  for  saying  that  he  expedled  to  meet  some 
members  of  the  church  in  hell,  and  hoped  he 
should. 

The  General  Court  at  New  Haven  of  course 
undertook  to  suppress  heresy  by  violence,  and 
tried  their  hand  at  punishing  the  Quakers.  But 
their  attempts  were  weak  and  trifling  compared 
with  the  tragic  episodes  of  Massachusetts.  The 
Quakers,  who  sought  death  and  suffering  in  the 
cause  of  their  faith  as  most  men  seek  pleasure, 
hardly  considered  New  Haven  worthy  of  their 
250 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

attention,  for  the  chances  in  Massachusetts  were 
very  much  more  abundant. 

The  peculiar  proceedings  of  parental  control 
over  everybody  which  the  magistrates  of  New 
Haven  exercised  are  the  source  of  all  that  has 
been  said  about  the  so-called  Blue  Laws  with 
which  Connecticut  has  been  reproached  for  the 
last  hundred  years.  If  the  reproach  applied 
anywhere,  it  was  to  the  New  Haven  colony 
alone.  But  it  is  unfair  that  even  New  Haven 
should  bear  the  whole  weight  of  the  odium  of 
blueness  ;  for  if  by  blue  be  meant  that  which  is 
fanatical  and  absurd,  the  blueness  of  Massachu 
setts  was  far  greater  than  the  blueness  of  New 
Haven. 

For  the  name  Blue  Laws,  and  for  a  great  deal 
of  the  controversy  about  them,  Connecticut  has 
to  thank  a  tory  clergyman  of  the  Church  of 
England  named  Peters,  who,  having  been  driven 
from  the  country  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution, 
revenged  himself  by  writing  a  history  of  Con- 
neclicut.  Besides  the  supposed  blue  laws  for 
bidding  people  to  make  mince-pies  and  kiss  their 
children  on  Sunday,  his  book  contains  most 
amusing  stories  about  bull-frogs  invading  a  town 
and  roaring  so  that  the  inhabitants  fled  to  the 
woods,  thinking  that  they  were  attacked  by 
the  French  and  Indians.  He  tells  of  a  place 
where  the  Connecticut  River  runs  through  a 
251 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

passage  only  five  yards  wide,  with  rocks  on 
either  hand  which  intercept  the  clouds.  The 
water,  he  says,  in  going  through  this  passage  is 
so  consolidated  that  an  iron  crow-bar  cannot  be 
forced  into  it. 

The  blue  laws  of  New  Haven  which  were 
aclually  in  existence  were  the  usual  ones  of  the 
extreme  Puritans, — laws  to  prevent  traders  mak 
ing  more  than  a  certain  profit,  laws  to  regulate 
wages,  laws  to  compel  every  bachelor  to  live 
with  some  family,  and  laws  against  idleness  and 
smoking.  No  one  could  begin  the  practice  of 
smoking  until  he  had  obtained  a  license  from  the 
court,  and  even  then  could  not  smoke  on  the 
street.  Massachusetts  had  similar  blue  laws, 
and  such  laws  were  enforced  wherever  extreme 
Puritanism  had  a  strong  foothold. 

The  two  little  colonies,  the  one  at  Hartford 
devoted  to  freedom,  and  the  other  at  New 
Haven  devoted  to  bigotry,  prospered  moderately 
for  some  twenty  years,  regulating  their  trade, 
providing  for  militia  drill,  the  branding  of 
horses,  and  the  ringing  of  swine,  until  they  were 
united  by  a  charter  from  Charles  II.  in  1662. 
This  charter  was  obtained  by  Connecticut,  and 
greatly  to  the  surprise  of  New  Haven. 

Young  Winthrop,  who  was  governor  of  Con 
necticut  and  son  of  the  Winthrop  who  was  so 
often  governor  of  Massachusetts,  went  to  Eng- 
252 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

land  to  procure  a  charter  for  the  colony.  Both 
Connecticut  and  New  Haven  had  flourished  for 
twenty  years  without  charters,  and  in  all  that 
time,  so  far  as  official  afts  and  records  are  con 
cerned,  they  appear  to  have  forgotten  that  there 
was  such  a  person  as  the  King  of  England,  or 
such  a  country  as  Great  Britain.  Those  were 
the  days  of  Cromwell,  the  Commonwealth,  and 
Puritan  supremacy,  and  the  colonies  were  let 
alone. 

But  in  1660  Charles  II.  returned  to  his  own, 
and  Connecticut  deemed  it  wise  to  go  and  ask 
for  what  she  knew  would  soon  be  forced  upon 
her.  Connecticut  is  nothing  unless  shrewd. 
She  was  determined  to  be  beforehand  and  have 
an  early  influence  in  what  was  sure  to  be  done, 
and  she  certainly  secured  for  herself  one  of  the 
most  liberal  charters  ever  given  to  an  American 
colony. 

The  fawning  address  which  accompanied  the 
request  for  the  charter  is  not  creditable  to  colo 
nial  sincerity.  If  its  statements  can  be  believed, 
the  people  of  Hartford  had,  during  the  civil 
wars,  not  only  been  royalists  and  loyal,  but  they 
had  been  depressed  and  broken-hearted,  and  had 
been  hiding  in  the  woods  and  mountains  until 
the  returning  beams  of  his  gracious  majesty's 
sovereignty  should  cross  the  great  deep  and  light 
them  once  more  to  happiness. 
253 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

By  what  means  Winthrop  secured  such  an 
unusually  good  charter  is  still  somewhat  of  a 
mystery.  The  five  hundred  pounds  furnished 
him  by  the  colony  over  and  above  his  salary  is 
supposed  to  have  had  an  influence  at  that  care 
less  and  corrupt  court,  where  both  women  and 
men  made  incomes  by  assisting  suitors  in  ob 
taining  favors  from  the  king.  It  has  been  sug 
gested  that  Lord  Clarendon,  the  minister,  was 
favorable  to  Connecticut  because  he  was  anxious 
to  build  up  a  strong  colony  which  might  quarrel 
with  and  weaken  the  unruly  sectarians  of  Massa 
chusetts  Bay.  There  is  also  a  pretty  story  told 
that  Winthrop  had  a  ring  which  had  been  given 
to  his  father  by  the  father  of  Charles,  and  that 
this  was  very  effective. 

But  we  are  inclined  to  lose  confidence  in  these 
causes  when  we  find  that,  fifteen  months  after 
the  sealing  of  the  Connecticut  charter,  Rhode 
Island  got  a  charter  which  was  still  more  liberal 
and  free,  and  that  it  was  obtained  by  John  Clark, 
a  Baptist  minister,  who  made  no  pretensions  to 
the  diplomatic  skill  of  Winthrop,  and  who  had 
no  money  for  courtiers  and  no  ancestral  ring. 

It  is  useless  to  assign  any  reasons  for  the 
adlions  of  Charles  II.,  except  his  reckless  and 
fickle  temper.  He  was  then  flushed  with  vic 
tory  and  inclined  to  give  anything  a  mistress  or 
favorite  asked.  Within  two  years  after  granting 
254 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

this  charter  to  Connecticut  he  gave  half  of  the 
land  covered  by  it  to  his  brother,  the  Duke  of 
York,  and  we  have  already  seen  how  he  lavished 
on  favorites  the  land  of  Virginia. 

The  charter  was  so  free  and  general  in  its 
terms  that  after  the  Revolution  Connecticut 
lived  under  it  as  an  American  constitution  until 
the  year  1818.  The  governor  was  to  be  eledled 
by  the  people,  and  not  appointed  by  the  king, 
the  towns  were  to  decide  the  qualifications  of 
those  who  should  vote,  and  the  laws  of  the 
assembly  were  not  to  be  submitted  to  the  king 
for  his  approval. 

When  this  charter  was  brought  home  and 
opened,  behold,  the  boundaries  given  to  Con 
necticut  embraced  New  Haven.  The  second 
colony  was  swallowed  up  and  lost ;  the  little  in 
dependent  republic  of  New  Haven  had  become 
a  county  of  Connecticut.  Before  Winthrop  set 
out  for  England  he  had  been  questioned  by 
Davenport  about  this  very  matter,  and  had 
answered  that  he  had  no  intention  of  absorbing 
New  Haven,  and  that  if  the  king  should  include 
her  in  the  charter,  she  should  be  at  liberty  to 
join  or  not.  Afterwards,  when  the  charter  was 
shown,  he  asked  the  General  Court  to  respecl: 
and  carry  out  his  promise.  But  the  charter,  once 
given,  was  law,  and  as  law  it  was  entirely  beyond 
the  control  of  Winthrop  or  of  the  General  Court. 
255 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

There  is  some  evidence  that  Leete,  the 
governor  of  New  Haven,  specially  requested 
Winthrop  to  procure  a  union.  Many  of  the 
leading  men  in  New  Haven  were  anxious  for  a 
union.  Their  spiritual  despotism  was  dropping 
to  pieces.  The  disfranchised  majority  were 
becoming  unruly,  and  the  persecution  of  the 
Quakers  which  occurred  at  this  time  made  them 
worse.  They  became  indignant  at  the  cruelties 
inflifted,  and  thus  the  Quakers  assisted  in  over 
throwing  ecclesiasticism  in  New  Haven  in  very 
much  the  same  way  as  in  Massachusetts. 

The  disfranchised  had  everything  to  gain  by 
a  union  and  nothing  to  lose.  Union  meant  an 
extended  suffrage  and  larger  liberty.  When 
they  heard  of  the  provision  for  union  in  the 
charter  they  became  unmanageable ;  refused  to 
obey  the  laws  of  New  Haven,  and  were  con 
tinually  asking  the  sheriffs  and  marshals  whether 
their  authority  was  from  King  Charles. 

Two  years  and  a  half  passed  before  New 
Haven,  after  many  fastings  and  prayers  and  in 
numerable  meetings  of  committees,  finally  ac 
cepted  her  fate.  The  long  delay  avoided  any 
appearance  of  a  tame  submission  and  allowed 
the  extremists  time  to  reconcile  themselves  to 
the  change,  which  was  hastened  when  it  was 
learned  that  Charles  II.  had  in  a  careless  moment 
given  to  the  Duke  of  York  a  grant  of  land  which 
256 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

included  New  Haven.  Union  with  Hartford 
might  not  be  desirable,  but  submission  to  the 
duke  was  worse.  If  New  Haven  remained  out 
side  of  the  union  her  land  belonged  to  the  duke; 
but  if  she  joined  with  Hartford  she  had  some 
chance  of  resisting  his  claims. 

Connecticut  had  obtained  her  very  liberal 
charter  from  Charles  II.  when  he  was  fresh 
upon  the  throne  and  in  the  easy  humor  which 
soon  afterwards  gave  to  his  brother  part  of  the 
same  land  he  had  given  to  the  colony ;  and 
when,  on  the  death  of  Charles,  that  brother 
came  to  the  throne  as  James  II.,  he  took 
Connecticut  under  his  direft  control,  without 
regard  to  her  charter,  after  the  same  plan  he 
followed  with  the  other  northern  colonies,  ex 
cept  Pennsylvania,  which  he  left  in  the  hands  of 
his  friend  William  Penn. 

Massachusetts'  charter  was  cancelled  by  legal 
proceedings,  the  only  way  in  which  the  validity 
of  a  charter  could  be  destroyed.  But  a  char 
ter  could  be  temporarily  abrogated  by  the  king 
taking  possession  of  the  province  and  ruling 
it  according  to  his  pleasure  by  virtue  of  that 
vague  power  called  the  royal  prerogative.  In 
such  cases  he  set  the  charter  aside  for  the  time 
being,  and  when  he  restored  the  province,  or 
ceased  his  direft  rule  over  it,  the  charter  was 
again  in  force.  William  III.  took  possession  of 
VOL.  i.-i7  257 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

both  Maryland  and  Pennsylvania  in  this  way. 
Pennsylvania  was  restored  within  two  years ; 
but  Maryland  was  held  for  twenty-five  years. 

The  Connecticut  charter  was  never  annulled 
by  legal  proceedings.  Andros  came  and  took 
possession  of  the  colony  in  the  name  of  the  king, 
and  seems  to  have  demanded  that  the  document 
itself  should  be  surrendered  to  him.  The  people, 
it  is  said,  spoke  him  very  fair,  and  argued  and 
pleaded  with  him  for  a  long  time.  Then  the 
charter  was  brought  in  and  laid  on  the  table. 
Suddenly  the  candles  were  put  out,  and  when 
they  were  relit  the  charter  was  gone;  for  Captain 
Wadsworth  had  carried  it  off  and  hid  it  in  an 
oak  the  site  of  which  in  Hartford  is  now  marked 
by  a  stone. 

This  is  the  pretty  story  which  we  are  taught 
in  all  our  school-book  histories  ;  but  it  is  not 
supported  by  good  authority.  There  appear  to 
have  been  several  copies  of  the  charter.  One 
of  these,  which  was  in  all  probability  the  origi 
nal  instrument,  Andros  secured,  and  the  dupli 
cate  Wadsworth  got  possession  of  and  kept,  but 
whether  in  an  oak  or  in  his  own  house  is  not 
known.  In  May,  1715,  the  General  Court 
granted  Wadsworth  the  sum  of  twenty  shillings 
for  certain  services,  "  especially  in  securing  the 
duplicate  charter,  in  a  very  troublesome  season, 
when  our  constitution  was  struck  at,  and  in 
258 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

safely  keeping  and  preserving  the  same  ever 
since  unto  this  day."* 

No  contemporary  writers  tell  the  story  of  the 
candles  and  the  oak  ;  and  in  after-years  when 
the  story  was  told  we  find  the  details  of  it  vary 
ing  so  much  that  no  faith  can  be  placed  in  it. 
According  to  one  account,  Nathaniel  Stanley  took 
one  copy  and  John  Talcot  the  other  when  the 
lights  were  blown  out ;  and  Chalmers  says  it  was 
an  elm  in  which  it  was  concealed.  Still  another 
account  has  it  that  the  charter  was  surrendered 
to  Andros  and  afterwards  stolen  from  his 
room.f 

In  the  dearth  of  romantic  episodes  in  colonial 
history  there  has  always  been  great  temptation  to 
uphold  the  myth  of  the  charter  oak.  Histori 
cally  it  is  of  no  importance  ;  for  so  long  as  the 
charter  was  not  annulled  by  legal  proceedings,  its 
validity  could  not  be  permanently  destroyed  by 
Andros.  When  his  rule  ceased  the  people  still 
had  one  or  two  of  the  duplicates  to  read,  and  the 
old  government  under  it  was  restored. 

With  the  single  exception  of  Andros,  Con- 
nedYicut  never  had  a  royal  governor.  She  elefted 
her  own  chief  magistrate  annually,  usually  re- 
elefting  the  same  one  year  after  year,  and  was 

*  Palfrey's  "  New  England,"  vol.  iii.  p.  543. 
f  Brodhead's  "  New  York,"  vol.  ii.  p.  473. 
259 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

in  effeft  an  independent  colony  from  the  begin 
ning  to  the  end  of  her  history. 

Her  people  were  of  the  Massachusetts  type, 
but  in  a  milder  form.  Her  laws  were  largely 
copied  from  those  of  the  colony  of  Massachu 
setts  Bay,  and  in  some  instances  taken  word  for 
word.  The  public  school  system  was  the  same 
and  the  township  system  the  same,  and  there  was 
also  a  general  similarity  in  manners.  It  was 
sometimes  reproachfully  said  of  Connecticut  that 
she  was  too  much  inclined  to  trot  after  the  Bay 
Horse. 

The  Abbe  Robin,  after  coming  from  Massa 
chusetts,  was  much  impressed  with  the  mildness 
and  moderation  of  the  Connecticut  people.  He 
describes  them  as  leading  an  easy  life  without 
any  necessity  for  hard  labor,  and  says  that  even 
the  dogs  and  horses  were  unusually  gentle. 

In  material  prosperity  there  was  considerable 
difference  between  Massachusetts  and  Connecti 
cut.  Massachusetts  grew  rich  by  ship-building 
and  commerce ;  but  Connecticut,  though  pos 
sessed  of  several  fine  harbors,  had  fewer  ships. 
The  soil,  however,  especially  in  the  valley  of  the 
Connecticut  River,  was  rather  fertile,  and  con 
siderable  farm  produce  was  raised  and  sent  for 
sale  to  Boston.  Horses  and  mules  were  bred 
and  sold  in  the  Southern  colonies  and  in  the 
West  Indies.  The  trade  in  mules  was  quite 
260 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

large,  and  lasted  down  into  the  present  cen 
tury. 

There  is  a  good  story  told  of  John  Randolph, 
of  Virginia,  who,  seeing  a  drove  of  mules  pass 
ing  through  Washington  on  their  way  to  the 
South,  said  to  Marcy,  of  Connecticut,  ((  There 
go  some  of  your  constituents."  "  Yes,"  said 
Marcy,  "going  to  Virginia  to  teach  school." 

Tobacco  was  raised  in  Connecticut  in  colonial 
times  very  much  as  it  has  been  in  recent  years, 
and  there  was  some  slight  business  in  lumber 
and  staves  ;  but  in  comparison  with  the  popu 
lation  there  was  very  little  foreign  trade. 

The  population  of  Connecticut  increased 
slowly  in  comparison  with  the  population  of 
Massachusetts,  chiefly  because  the  colony  could 
not  support  many  people.  They  believed  in 
large  families  as  fully  as  the  people  of  Massa 
chusetts,  and  there  were  plenty  of  children 
born  ;  but  Connecticut  could  not  supply  them  all 
with  a  livelihood,  so  they  spread  out  into  other 
parts  of  the  continent.  A  large  number  of  them 
moved  to  the  Susquehanna  Valley  in  Pennsyl 
vania,  where  their  descendants  are  to  be  found 
to  this  day,  and  the  struggle  for  this  valley  is  the 
most  romantic  episode  in  Connecticut's  history.  * 

Eastern  Long  Island  and  Northern  New  Jer- 

*  See  "The  Making  of  Pennsylvania,"  p.  237. 
261 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

sey  were  settled  by  them,  and  so  were  Western 
Massachusetts  and  Western  Vermont.  The 
middle  and  western  parts  of  New  York  were 
developed  chiefly  by  Connecticut  pioneers ;  and 
finally,  that  part  of  Ohio  known  as  the  Western 
Reserve  has  acquired  its  characteristics  of  thrift, 
good  government,  and  high  intelligence  from  the 
Connecticut  families  who  founded  it. 

There  is  no  State  in  the  Union  which  has  been 
so  well  represented  outside  of  itself.  When 
ever  the  members  of  any  important  body  are 
arranged  according  to  their  nativity,  it  is  very 
often  found  that  the  natives  of  Connecticut  are 
more  numerous  than  those  of  any  other  State. 
In  the  Constitutional  Convention  of  New  York, 
held  in  1821,  out  of  a  total  of  one  hundred  and 
twenty-six  members,  thirty-two  were  natives  of 
Connecticut.  Only  nine  were  natives  of  Massa 
chusetts,  which,  according  to  the  ratio  of  popu 
lation,  should  have  had  seventy. 

At  one  time  one-fifth  of  the  members  of  both 
houses  of  Congress  had  been  born  in  Con 
necticut.  Calhoun  is  reported  to  have  said  that 
he  could  remember  the  day  when  the  natives  of 
Connecticut,  together  with  the  graduates  of  Yale, 
lacked  only  five  of  being  a  majority  of  Congress.* 

*  Litchfield     County    alone    is    said    to    have     produced 
thirteen   United    States    senators,    twenty-two    representa- 
262 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

This  migratory  spirit  has  been  very  aftive 
during  a  large  part  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  has  exerted  itself  in  peopling  what  we  call 
the  Great  West.  It  is  largely  the  wanderer 
from  Connecticut  who,  as  a  settler  or  a  peddler 
of  wooden  clocks  and  hardware,  or  as  an  in 
ventor  and  machinist,  has  made  the  peculiari 
ties  of  the  Yankee  so  well  known  throughout 
the  world. 

In  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  when  the  col 
onies  were  ranked  according  to  the  number  of 
men  they  sent  into  the  army  in  proportion 
to  their  population,  Connecticut  stood  second. 
She  went  to  war  with  the  same  steady  thorough 
ness  she  showed  in  peace ;  and  it  is  said  that  in 
one  Connecticut  brigade  there  were  seven  minis 
ters  as  captains  in  command  of  men  from  their 
own  congregations. 

Yale  University  is  as  significant  in  Connect 
icut  as  Harvard  is  in  Massachusetts.  To  the 
Puritan  mind  education  of  the  highest  kind  was 
a  necessity.  The  New  Haven  colony  set  apart 
land  for  a  college  in  the  ninth  year  after  their 
arrival.  Yale,  however,  was  not  actually  founded 
till  1701,  when  it  was  established  at  Saybrook, 

tives  in  Congress  from  New  York,  fifteen  Supreme  Court 
judges,  nine  presidents  of  colleges,  and  eleven  governors 
and  lieutenant-governors. 

263 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

at  the  mouth  of  the  Connecticut  River.  Some 
years  afterwards  it  was  moved  to  New  Haven, 
and  New  Haven,  it  will  be  remembered,  was, 
like  Cambridge  and  Boston,  the  abode  of  the 
most  intolerant  and  extreme  kind  of  Puritanism. 

It  is  perhaps  significant  that  our  two  most 
famous  institutions  of  learning  grew  up  in  the 
places  where  Puritanism  was  most  bigoted  and 
extreme.  The  mild,  liberal  democrats  at  Hart 
ford  seem  not  to  have  been  so  intensely  devoted 
to  learning.  In  fact,  extreme  Puritanism  was  so 
complex  and  subtle  that  it  required  the  most  ex 
haustive  efforts  of  the  mind  to  maintain  it. 
Even  in  its  worst  complexity  and  subtleness  it 
always  openly  professed  to  be  founded  on  reason 
and  knowledge,  and  if  it  could  not  be  main 
tained  by  those  means  was  willing  to  fall. 

The  doctrine  of  intolerance,  for  example,  was 
always  maintained  by  the  Puritan  preachers  of 
Massachusetts  with  great  ingenuity  of  language 
and  show  of  knowledge.  The  more  extreme 
the  Puritan  became  the  more  need  he  had  for 
intellectual  training ;  and  his  system  of  belief 
was  so  constructed  that  every  part  of  it  called 
for  much  mental  activity  and  the  labors  of  the 
scholar. 

But  the  general  tone  of  Connecticut  Puritanism 
outside  of  New  Haven  was  comparatively  mild, 
and  softened  the  excesses  of  the  New  Haven 
264 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

citizens.  Early  in  the  history  of  the  colony, 
about  the  year  1662,  this  mildness  produced  a 
controversy  which  resulted  in  what  was  called 
the  Half- Way  Covenant. 

Democracy  and  ecclesiasticism  under  Hooker 
and  his  followers  had  gone  along  smoothly  side 
by  side  and  seldom  interfered  with  one  another ; 
but  the  tax  law,  which  assessed  all,  whether 
members  of  the  church  or  not,  for  the  benefit 
of  the  churches,  soon  gave  trouble. 

Those  who  were  not  church  members,  those 
who  could  not  appear  before  the  ministers  and 
show  a  satisfactory  conviftion  of  sin  and  religious 
experience,  were  in  the  position  of  paying  taxes 
for  the  support  of  a  church  in  which  they  had 
neither  voice  nor  vote.  This  was  not  a  very 
terrible  tyranny,  and,  compared  with  what  the 
disfranchised  majority  in  Massachusetts  suffered, 
it  was  no  tyranny  at  all ;  but  still  it  was  some 
thing  to  complain  of,  and  after  a  most  volumi 
nous  controversy  it  brought  about  the  Half- Way 
Covenant. 

The  Half-Way  Covenant  was  adopted  by  a 
synod  of  all  the  New  England  churches,  ac 
cepted  and  admired  by  some  who  thought  them 
selves  progressive  and  were  called  Large  Con- 
gregationalists,  and  denounced,  rejected,  and 
bewailed  as  part  of  the  degeneracy  of  the  age  by 
those  who  wished  to  stand  in  the  old  paths. 
265 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

The  synod  had  no  power  to  force  the  system  on 
the  churches  :  it  was  merely  an  advisory  body  ; 
but  its  decision  was  quite  largely  accepted  and 
afted  upon  in  Connecticut  and,  to  some  extent, 
in  Massachusetts  for  many  years. 

It  provided  that  the  churches  must  accept  as 
members  all  who  had  been  baptized,  if  they 
were  of  years  of  discretion,  not  scandalous  in 
life,  and  understood  the  fundamentals  of  religion. 
The  children  of  persons  so  admitted  must  also 
be  baptized  whenever  presented  for  it.  Thus 
the  severe  examination  into  religious  feeling 
and  knowledge  was  abolished,  and  the  simple 
formality  of  baptism  became  the  only  qualifica 
tion  for  the  right  to  an  ecclesiastical  vote. 

This  compromise  quieted  the  democratic  ele 
ment  in  Conneclicut  until  the  year  1818.  Up 
to  that  time  the  taxes  for  the  support  of  the 
church  continued  to  be  levied,  and  were  col 
lected  by  the  civil  officers.  For  many  years 
before  the  adoption  of  the  new  constitution  in 
1818  these  taxes  were  paid  by  Episcopalians 
and  members  of  other  religious  bodies  whose 
belief  would  never  permit  them  to  become 
members  of  the  Congregational  churches. 

The  Half- Way  Covenant  was  in  effedl  a  yield 
ing  of  the  church  to  the  clamors  of  the  masses 
who  wished  to  get  within  it,  and  when  within 
they  are  generally  believed  to  have  done  the 
266 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

church  no  good.  The  severe  examination  into 
religious  experience  was  one  of  the  most  ener 
gizing  principles  of  Puritanism,  and  after  it  was 
lost  in  the  Half- Way  Covenant  the  churches  are 
said  to  have  been  invaded  by  a  decay  of  religious 
feeling  which  was  not  restored  until  after  many 
years  and  many  revivals. 

But  the  comparative  mildness  of  Connecticut 
Puritanism  preserved  it  from  change.  There 
was  no  reaction,  no  renaissance,  as  in  Massa 
chusetts,  because  there  was  less  from  which  to 
react  ;  and  Unitarianism,  which  has  almost  super 
seded  the  old  faith  of  Massachusetts,  has  left 
Connecticut  untouched.  The  Connecticut  Con 
gregationalism  of  to-day  seems  to  be  the  nearest 
approach  we  now  have  to  the  Puritanism  of 
colonial  times. 

The  Connecticut  Puritans  who  changed  their 
religion  usually  became  Episcopalians.  After 
the  Revolution,  when  the  American  branch  of 
the  English  Church  renewed  itself,  Connecticut 
became  one  of  its  most  important  strongholds, 
and  was  the  first  community  in  the  country  to 
secure  a  bishop. 

The  early  settlers  of  Connecticut  are  said  to 
have  been  of  excellent  English  ancestry,  the  de 
scendants  of  knights  and  gentlemen.  Four-fifths 
of  the  landed  proprietors  of  Hartford,  Windsor, 
and  Wethersfield  belonged  to  families  that  had 
267 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

had  coats  of  arms  granted  to  them  in  Great 
Britain.  They  had  come  to  a  wilderness  from 
the  stress  of  the  times,  as  the  Cavaliers  went  to 
Virginia,  willing  to  begin  life  anew,  labor  with 
their  hands,  live  in  small  cabins,  and  be  laid  to 
rest  in  obscure  graves  above  which  were  raised 
no  monuments  emblazoned  with  heraldic  em 
blems. 

Certain  it  is  that  their  names,  like  those  of 
the  settlers  of  Massachusetts,  are  of  the  purest 
Anglo-Saxon.  The  Ludlows,  Winthrops,  Wol- 
cotts,  Wyllyses,  Trumbulls,  Chittendens,  Allyns, 
Ingersolls,  Pitkins,  Lymans,  Olmsteads,  and 
Treadwells  are  of  no  uncertain  sound.  We  can 
read  through  lists  containing  hundreds  of  these 
names  without  finding  a  single  one  of  alien 
origin,  which  is  a  refreshment  to  all  believers  in 
the  importance  of  race  after  the  modern  lists  of 
Irish  and  Germans,  mixed  with  Italians,  Huns, 
and  Russians. 

Their  life  and  beginnings  were  very  like  the 
early  Massachusetts  life,  but  on  a  smaller  scale, 
and  not  so  immediately  prosperous.  The  people 
who  began  Hartford,  Windsor,  and  Wethersfield 
lived  at  first  in  wretched  huts.  Afterwards  log 
cabins  were  built,  followed  by  frame  houses,  the 
ministers  usually  having  the  largest  and  hand 
somest.  Occasionally  a  large  stone  house  was 
built,  like  the  Rev.  Henry  Whitfield's  house  at 
268 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

Guilford,  of  the  year  1640,  so  massive  that  it 
was  used  as  a  fort.  The  houses  of  Governor 
Eaton  and  of  Davenport  in  New  Haven  were 
also  large ;  and  Davenport's  house  is  said  to  have 
had  thirteen  fireplaces  in  it. 

The  ordinary  wooden  house  differed  consider 
ably  from  the  modern  one.  It  was  constructed 
almost  entirely  of  oak,  even  the  clap-boards 
being  made  of  oak,  split  from  the  tree  and 
laboriously  reduced  with  a  shaving  knife.  The 
floors  were  also  of  oak,  and  the  windows  were 
leaden  frames  set  with  little  diamond-shaped 
panes,  swinging  on  hinges.  Some  pictures  of 
these  early  houses  represent  them  with  the 
second  story  overhanging  the  first,  and  globular 
ornaments,  no  doubt  also  carved  out  of  oak,  hang 
ing  from  the  edges  and  eaves. 

The  outer  doors  were  made  of  double  oaken 
planks,  fastened  by  wrought  nails  and  spikes 
until  they  were  like  a  solid  mass,  and  were 
secured  within  by  heavy  wooden  bars,  a  pro 
tection,  probably,  against  an  attack  of  Indians, 
who,  though  not  so  troublesome  as  in  Massa 
chusetts,  were  nevertheless  a  constant  source  of 
danger.  The  early  laws  of  the  colony  com 
pelled  one  member  of  every  family  to  bring  his 
arms  to  church. 

The  rooms  were  only  about  seven  feet  high. 
There  were  the  same  large  fireplaces  as  in  other 
269 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

parts  of  the  country,  where  prodigious  quanti 
ties  of  wood  were  burnt  on  the  andirons.  Even 
in  summer  these  fires  were  lighted  in  the  even 
ing,  and  the  family  sat  round  them,  telling  stories, 
listening  to  the  cries  of  the  frogs  and  the  whip- 
poorwill,  or  startled  by  the  gleam  of  a  meteor  seen 
through  the  diamond-shaped  panes  or  open  door, 
or  the  cry  of  a  screech-owl  when  a  cloud  passed 
over  the  moon,  both  of  which  were  believed  to 
be  of  evil  portent. 

Swords  were  worn  by  the  better  class  of 
people  when  in  full  dress,  as  in  all  the  colonies, 
cocked  hats,  broad-brim  hats,  and  as  a  luxury  a 
sort  of  hat  called  a  black  beaverette.  The  coat 
was  long,  straight,  coming  below  the  knee,  with 
a  low  collar  showing  the  white  neck-cloth 
fastened  with  a  silver  buckle  behind.  The  small 
clothes,  as  they  were  called,  now  used  only  for 
playing  games,  were  universal,  and  were  tied 
with  ribbons,  at  first  above  the  knee  and  in  later 
years  below  it.  They  were  often  made  of  buck 
skin,  and  bright  red  was  a  favorite  color  for  the 
long  stockings.  The  shoes  were  square-toed 
with  enormous  buckles,  sometimes  of  silver. 
The  lower  classes  wore  knit  yarn  caps  of  bright 
colors  with  a  heavy  tassel. 

As  in  Massachusetts,  we  find  that  high  boots, 
usually  very  wide  at  the  top,  were  considered  an 
ornament,  and  worn  to  church.  A  handsome 
270 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

pair  of  them  was  supposed  to  last  almost  a  life 
time.  The  women  of  all  classes  were  very 
fond  of  bright  scarlet  cloaks,  which  they  wore 
on  all  occasions,  and  they  must  have  been  a 
striking  contrast  against  the  dark  foliage  of  the 
pine  forests.  There  was  the  same  hoarding  of 
great  quantities  of  linen  which  we  find  in  the 
other  colonies.  Everybody  seems  to  have  had 
abundance  to  wear,  and  we  read  of  a  Connedli- 
cut  girl  sent  to  boarding-school  with  twelve  silk 
gowns,  and  a  thirteenth  afterwards  ordered 
because  she  had  not  enough. 

The  men  had  wrestling,  leaping,  and  running 
matches,  shot  at  a  mark,  played  ball,  and  bar 
gaining  for  all  sorts  of  trifles  was  a  recognized 
amusement.  Apparently  there  were  more 
amusements  than  in  Massachusetts.  In  winter, 
which  was  the  time  of  leisure,  there  were  sleigh 
ing  parties.  Dancing  and  balls  ware  common, 
and  whenever  a  minister  was  ordained  there  was 
an  ordination  ball,  which  became  a  settled  Con 
necticut  custom  ;  but  it  was  always  regarded  as 
more  or  less  of  a  scandal,  and  finally  became  so 
elaborate  and  hilarious  that  the  more  sedate 
people  stopped  it. 

In   the   country  districts   the   people  went  to 

church  on  foot  and  on  horseback  by  roads  or 

paths.      "  Many  a   time,"  says   the    Rev.  Levi 

Nelson,  of  Norwich,  "  while  passing  over  to  the 

271 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

society,  has  my  attention  been  arrested  to  notice 
paths  now  given  up  where  they  used  to  make 
their  rugged  way  to  the  house  of  God  almost  as 
surely  as  the  holy  Sabbath  returned.  .  .  .  To 
this  day  I  love  to  think  of  their  appearance  in 
the  house  of  God,  of  the  seats  they  occupied, 
and  of  their  significant  motions  to  express  their 
approbation  of  the  truth." 

Until  1750  there  were  no  carriages.  Every 
body  rode  a  horse  or  walked;  and  the  same 
condition  prevailed  almost  everywhere  in  New 
England,  except  near  large  towns  like  Boston. 
For  over  a  century  the  New  Englanders  lived 
in  the  saddle  like  the  Virginians,  and  yet  there 
was  no  very  great  love  of  horses  developed,  nor 
a  fine  breed  of  them  for  saddle  use.  They  were 
usually  taught  to  pace,  which  was  the  gait  re 
garded  as  easiest  and  best  for  a  long  distance. 
A  good  pacer  could,  it  is  said,  without  difficulty 
make  fifty  or  sixty  miles  a  day. 

Even  after  1750  there  were  very  few  carriages 
until  the  Revolution  was  over,  and  the  first  that 
appeared  were  two-wheeled,  called  chaises  or 
gigs.  They  were  not  allowed  to  be  used  on 
Sunday,  for  the  rumbling  of  their  wheels  was 
an  irreverent  disturbance  of  worship  in  the 
meeting-houses.  When  Governor  Trumbull 
used  to  visit  Norwich,  at  the  time  of  the  Revo 
lution,  in  his  chaise,  the  people  crowded  to  the 
272 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

doors  to  see  it  pass,  and  there  was  no  end  of 
bowing  and  courtesying  as  the  wonderful  vehicle 
rolled  by. 

Flax  was  an  important  crop  on  most  farms 
in  all  the  Northern  colonies;  and,  besides  the 
planting  of  it,  the  rotting,  breaking,  dressing, 
spinning,  weaving,  and  bleaching  involved  a 
great  deal  of  labor.  The  women  in  all  the 
colonies  were  industrious  spinners,  and  those 
of  Connecticut  were  in  no  way  inferior  to  their 
sisters.  A  spinning-wheel  was  usually  the  most 
conspicuous  part  of  a  bride's  outfit  when  she 
left  her  father's  house.  Girls  who  could  annu 
ally  add  many  skeins  of  linen  yarn  and  sheets 
and  towels  to  the  supply  they  were  amassing 
for  the  great  event  of  their  lives  were  sure  of 
suitors. 

Spinning  nearly  all  day  long  was  a  common 
occupation  of  the  women.  Sometimes  a  brother 
would  carry  the  small  wheel  over  to  a  neigh 
bor's,  where  his  sister  could  spin  and  gossip 
with  a  friend.  As  they  spun,  the  women  often 
hummed  old  English  ballads  or  Puritan  psalms, 
and  mingled  with  the  whir  of  the  wheel  it 
made  pleasant  music,  which,  coming  through 
the  open  windows  in  summer,  caused  many  a 
traveller  to  pause  and  listen. 

It  has  been  said  that  spinning  was  very  healthy 
exercise  for  women,  and,  unlike  ordinary  house- 
VOL.  I.-i8  273 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

hold  drudgery,  made  them  cheerful  and  added 
grace  to  their  movements.  In  both  Connecticut 
and  New  Hampshire  there  are  traditions  that 
the  women  among  the  masses  of  the  people 
were  much  more  vigorous  and  handsome  in 
colonial  times  than  after  the  Revolution,  when 
domestic  spinning  and  weaving  had  ceased. 

A  manuscript  diary  in  the  possession  of  the 
Connecticut  Historical  Society,  written  by  a 
young  girl,  Abigail  Foote,  of  Colchester,  in  the 
year  1775,  confirms  what  we  gather  from  other 
sources.  She  was  the  daughter  of  plain  people 
apparently,  but  more  intelligent  and  more  in 
clined  to  books  and  education  than  people  of 
her  sort  outside  of  New  England. 

She  was  extremely  busy,  knitting,  spinning, 
weaving,  cooking,  teaching  neighbors'  children, 
helping  her  brother  mend  harness,  riding  horses, 
going  to  school,  reading  sermons  and  poetry, 
weeding  in  the  garden,  with  a  great  deal  of 
visiting  among  people  of  her  own  age.  In  fadl, 
we  often  find  evidence  that  the  colonists  were  a 
very  busy,  active  people  with  all  their  time 
employed,  but  taking  delight  in  ordinary  duties 
instead  of  being  worried  and  discontented  over 
them.  There  was  no  city  life  to  set  an  absurd 
standard,  and  the  work  which  Abigail  Foote 
thought  so  honorable  and  pleasant  as  to  deserve 
recording  in  a  diary  has  been  now  so  long  per- 
274 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

formed   by  low-class  foreigners   that  it   is   sup 
posed  to  be  necessarily  degrading. 

"  Fix'd  Gown  for  Prude  Just  to  clear  my  teeth, — Mend 
Mother's  Riding  hood — Ague  in  my  face — Ellen  was 
spark'd  last  night — Mother  spun  short  thread — Fix'd  two 
Gowns  for  Welch's  girls — Carded  tow — spun  linen — 
worked  on  Cheese  Basket — Hatchel'd  Flax  with  Hannah 
and  we  did  5 lib  a  piece — Pleated  and  ironed — Read  a  ser 
mon  of  Dooridges — Spooled  a  piece — milked  the  cows — 
spun  linen  and  did  50  knots — made  a  broom  of  Guinea 
wheat  straw — Spun  thread  to  whiten — Went  to  Mr.  Otis's 
and  made  them  a  swinging  visit — Israel  said  I  might  ride 
his  jade  (horse) — Set  a  red  Dye — Prude  stay'd  at  home 
and  learned  Eve's  Dream  by  heart — Had  two  scholars  from 
Mrs  Taylor's — I  carded  two  pounds  of  whole  wool  and 
felt  Nationly — Spun  harness  twine — Scoured  the  Pewter." 

Wednesday  was  lefture  day  in  Connecticut  as 
Thursday  was  in  Massachusetts.  Thursday  in 
Connecticut  was  usually  training  day  for  the 
militia  and  a  sort  of  holiday.  As  the  week 
wore  on  work  relaxed,  and  Friday  was  often  de 
voted  to  fishing,  wolf- hunting,  or  easy  occupa 
tions.  On  Saturday  clothes  were  mended,  and 
there  was  a  general  cleaning  up  for  the  solemn 
Sabbath,  which  began  Saturday  evening  ;  and  on 
Sunday  the  people  seem  to  have  been  some 
times  summoned  to  church  by  beat  of  drum,  as 
in  the  old  days  at  Plymouth. 

Child,  in  his  "Old  New  England  Town," 
which  was  Fairfield,  says  that  when  young 
275 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

people  were  courting  and  compelled  to  sit  in 
the  same  room  with  the  girl's  parents,  they  often 
spoke  to  one  another  through  a  long  reed  tube 
called  a  whispering  rod.  Methods  of  court 
ship  were  very  peculiar,  as  we  shall  see. 

In  the  opinion  of  the  magistrates,  young  men 
were  to  be  protected  from  the  fascination  of 
women.  In  New  Haven,  in  1660,  Jacob  Mui- 
line  went  into  a  room  where  Sarah  Tuttle  was, 
seized  her  gloves,  and  then  kissed  her.  The 
court  asked  Sarah  if  Jacob  had  "  inveigled  her 
affections,"  and,  like  the  spirited  girl  she  was, 
she  said  "No."  So  they  fined  Sarah  rather 
than  Jacob,  and  called  her  a  "  Bould  Virgin." 
To  which  she  replied  "  that  she  hoped  God 
would  enable  her  to  carry  it  better  for  time  to 
come." 

It  seems  that  at  one  time  some  of  the  women 
of  Boston  began  to  paint  their  faces,  a  fashion 
which  is  always  coming  and  going.  It  was 
feared  that  it  might  spread  to  the  country  dis 
tricts,  especially  in  Connecticut,  and  one  of  the 
ministers  who  preached  against  it  said  that  "  at 
the  resurrection  of  the  just  there  will  no  such 
sight  be  met  as  the  Angels  carrying  painted 
Ladies  in  their  arms." 

Children  were  expected  to  wear  solemn  faces 
and  not  laugh  in  the  presence  of  a  minister. 
They  stood  aside  when  any  respectable  person 
276 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

or  stranger  passed  them  in  the  street ;  the  boys 
bowed  and  pulled  off  their  caps  and  the  girls 
courtesied.  When  playing  together  outside  of 
the  school  house  they  would  sometimes  arrange 
themselves  in  a  row  to  do  their  manners,  as 
it  was  called,  to  some  elderly  person  who  ap 
proached.  These  pretty  customs  were  not  un 
common  in  some  of  the  other  colonies. 

Many  of  the  farms  had  a  shop  where  ox 
yokes  and  bows  were  made,  also  tool  handles, 
and  even  some  kinds  of  furniture.  This  Yankee 
facility  in  the  use  of  tools  was  common  all  over 
New  England,  where  farmers  were  usually  traders 
and  mechanics,  and,  if  they  lived  near  the  water, 
boat-builders  and  sailors. 

Connecticut  vessels  usually  traded  to  the  West 
Indies,  and  every  farmer  within  reach  of  the 
water  was  apt  to  intrust  the  skipper  with  a  small 
venture  of  poultry,  a  horse  or  two,  or  a  small 
quantity  of  vegetables  or  grain.  The  vessels 
were  usually  small,  varying  from  thirty  to  one 
hundred  tons,  and  those  of  one  hundred  tons 
were  often  rigged  with  three  masts  and  yards 
like  a  ship.  The  sloop-rigged  vessels  must  have 
been  larger  than  those  of  that  description  in 
modern  times,  for  some  of  them  carried  thirty  or 
forty  horses. 

The  pursuit  of  whales  began  in  Connecticut 
about  the  same  time  as  in  Nantucket  in  Massa- 
277 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

chusetts.  At  first  whales  could  be  captured  in 
Long  Island  Sound,  or  just  outside  of  it.  They 
were  pursued  in  large  row-boats  and  brought 
ashore  to  be  cut  up.  Many  Indians  were  em 
ployed  in  this  occupation,  which,  being  full  of 
excitement  and  very  much  like  hunting,  did  not 
seem  so  degrading  as  most  of  the  white  man's 
work.  They  made  excellent  harpooners,  and 
would  even  labor  for  days  at  the  oars. 

Soon  the  whalers  began  to  use  sloops,  which 
went  as  far  as  the  Grand  Banks ;  then  larger 
vessels,  which  cruised  to  the  Azores  and  the 
West  Indies;  and  after  1750  whaling  was  a 
great  industry  of  New  England.  The  ships 
visited  Davis'  Straits,  Baffin's  Bay,  and  the 
coast  of  Africa,  and  before  the  Revolution  were 
to  be  found  in  almost  every  sea.  Nantucket 
alone  had  one  hundred  and  fifty  whaling  vessels, 
employing  two  thousand  sailors ;  and  the  won 
derful  energy  and  skill  shown  in  this  calling  were, 
in  the  opinion  of  Burke,  proofs  that  the  colonists 
could  never  be  conquered. 

The  sharp  humor,  wit,  and  sarcasm  which 
were  so  prevalent  among  all  classes  in  Massa 
chusetts  were  not,  it  seems,  so  common  in  Con 
necticut.  A  story,  however,  has  come  down 
to  us,  which  is  said  to  have  been  told  at  many 
colonial  firesides,  of  a  woman  who,  while  cross 
ing  Windsor  Plains  from  the  Smoking  Tree  to 
278 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

Pickett's  horse-shed,  was  overtaken  by  a  ter 
rible  storm.  Urging  her  horse  to  his  utmost 
speed,  she  was  able  to  keep  ahead  of  it,  while 
the  torrents  poured  down  just  behind  her ;  but 
her  little  dog,  unable  to  keep  up,  was  obliged 
to  swim  all  the  way. 

Bride-stealing  was  a  peculiar  amusement  in 
which  the  young  people  sometimes  indulged. 
Those  who  were  not  invited  to  the  wedding  and 
felt  affronted  would  watch  their  chance  after  the 
ceremony  was  performed,  seize  the  bride  and, 
placing  her  on  a  horse  behind  one  of  their 
number,  gallop  to  a  neighboring  tavern  where 
they  had  ordered  supper.  If  they  could  reach 
LUC  tavern  without  being  overtaken  by  the 
wedding-party  .h°  night  was  spent  there  in 
feasting  and  dancing,  anJ  <-he  bridegroom  was  in 
honor  bound  to  foot  the  bills. 

In  one  instance  the  wedding-party,  expecting 
the  trick,  had  dressed  a  man  as  a  bride,  and  as  he 
stood  about  in  a  conspicuous  position  he  was 
seized  and  carried  off.  The  wedding-party  fol 
lowed  leisurely  to  the  tavern,  where  they  found 
the  kidnappers  just  making  the  mortifying  dis 
covery  that  their  bride  wore  boots  ;  and  this  time 
the  kidnappers  paid  the  bill. 

In  a  journey  he  made  from  Rhode  Island  to 
Hartford  the  Marquis  de  Chastellux  stopped  for 
a  time  in  Voluntown,  Connecticut,  where  an  in- 
279 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

cident  occurred  which  raises  an  interesting 
question  of  morals  in  colonial  times,  especially 
in  New  England.  Chastellux  stayed  in  Volun- 
town  at  a  tavern,  and  was  very  much  pleased 
with  the  family  who  kept  it,  describing  them 
as  charming,  and  the  two  daughters  "  as  hand 
some  as  angels." 

One  of  these  daughters  was  confined  to  her 
room,  and  Chastellux  tells  us  that  he  learned  that 
she  had  been  deceived  by  a  young  man,  who 
after  promising  to  marry  her  had  deserted. 
Chagrin  and  the  consequences  that  were  to  fol 
low  had  thrown  her  into  a  state  of  languor. 
She  never  came  down-stairs  ;  but  the  greatest 
care  was  taken  of  her  ;  somebody  alwavs  !:°pL 
her  company ;  and  her  parent"  seem  to  have 
had  no  hesitation  in  telling  her  story  to  Chas 
tellux  and  other  travellers. 

When  the  first  edition  of  his  travels  appeared 
*Ti  France  the  marquis  was  very  roundly  abused 
for  heartless  indelicacy  in  describing  this  girl's 
misfortune  and  giving  her  name.  But  in  the 
English  edition  the  translator,  who  had  travelled 
all  over  America,  defended  him  in  a  note,  in 
which  he  maintained  that  as  the  girl's  parents 
had  had  no  hesitation  in  telling  her  story,  and  as 
it  was  the  custom  of  the  country  to  regard  such 
accidents  not  as  irretrievable  ruin,  but  as  mis 
fortunes  which  could  be  remedied,  the  marquis 
280 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

was  merely  giving  an  instance  of  American 
manners. 

The  translator  further  went  on  to  explain 
that  young  women  who  were  guilty  of  slips  of 
this  kind  lost  none  of  their  rights  in  society; 
their  mistake  was  lamented  rather  than  con 
demned  ;  and  they  could  afterwards  marry  and 
take  as  good  a  position  as  ever,  although  their 
story  was  neither  unknown  nor  attempted  to  be 
concealed.  Morals,  in  America,  he  said,  were 
in  their  infancy,  in  the  sense  that  people  had  a 
very  simple  way  of  regarding  these  things  which 
no  right-minded  person  would  attempt  to  ridi 
cule  ;  and  he  has  some  sharp  words  for  French 
infidelities  among  married  people,  from  which 
the  Americans  were  quite  free. 

It  turned  out  that  the  young  woman's  lover 
returned,  and  both  Chastellux  and  the  translator 
afterwards  saw  her  perfectly  happy  with  her 
child  passing  from  her  knees  to  those  of  its 
grandmother. 

"  The  translator,  who  has  been  at  Voluntown,  and  en 
joyed  the  society  and  witnessed  the  happiness  of  this 
amiable  family,  is  likewise  acquainted  with  the  whole  of 
this  story.  He  is  so  well  satisfied  with  the  justness  of  the 
liberal-minded  author's  reasoning  on  American  manners  in 
this  particular,  that  he  has  not  scrupled  to  give  the  name 
of  this  worthy  family  at  length,  not  apprehending  that  their 
characters  would  suffer  the  smallest  injury,  where  alone 
281 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

the  imputation  is  of  any  consequence ;  nor  does  he  fear 
opposing  the  virtue  of  this  family  and  of  these  manners 
to  European  chastity,  prudery,  and  refinement.  The  cir 
cumstances  of  this  story  were  related  to  the  translator  .  .  . 
with  the  same  sensibility  and  the  same  innocence  with 
which  they  appear  to  have  told  them  to  the  Marquis  de 
Chastellux." 

Some  time  afterwards,  during  another  journey 
in  Connecticut,  the  marquis  found  another  in 
stance  of  very  much  the  same  sort  near  Farm- 
ington,  in  which  he  was  again  impressed  with 
the  entire  openness  and  innocence  of  all  the 
people  concerned,  and  their  willingness  to  sup 
port  and  care  for  a  young  woman  who  had  made 
such  a  mistake. 

He  and  the  translator  comment  at  length  on 
the  circumstance,  and  the  fairness  and  justice  of 
not  making  the  mother  an  outcast  and  a  criminal 
for  a  lapse  for  which  the  father  goes  unpunished. 
The  marquis  suggests  a  possible  explanation  of 
the  custom  by  saying  that  the  acquisition  of  a 
citizen  in  a  new  country  is  so  precious  that  a 
girl  by  bringing  up  her  child  seems  to  expiate 
the  wickedness  which  brought  it  into  existence. 
The  translator  adds  that  he  hopes  it  will  be 
very  long  before  "  the  barbarous  prejudices  and 
punishments  of  polished  Europe  shall  be  intro 
duced  into  this  happy  country  ;"  and  he  says  that 
in  his  experience  in  America  nothing  was  more 
282 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

common  than  such  slips  among  very  young 
people  nor  less  frequent  than  a  repetition  of  the 
same  weakness. 

The  remains  of  this  condition  of  affairs  have 
been  found  in  quite  recent  times  in  wild  parts 
of  some  of  the  Southern  States,  where  no  severe 
social  penalties  are  inflicted  on  a  woman  for  her 
first  child  born  out  of  wedlock,  although  a  sec 
ond  offence  outlaws  her.  In  these  places  travel 
lers  have  talked  with  women  who,  without  the 
least  hesitation  or  embarrassment,  have  described 
their  child  as  a  first  child  or  have  distinguished 
it  by  that  name  from  others  of  their  flock. 

In  New  England  and  the  other  colonies  the 
young  unmarried  wTomen  had  a  great  deal  of 
liberty  allowed  them,  probably  because  the 
villages  and  neighborhoods  were  at  first  com 
posed  of  very  few  people  all  well  known  to 
one  another,  and  it  seemed  absurd,  and  was  in 
fa6l  impossible,  to  bring  up  girls  in  the  seclu 
sion  which  was  imposed  upon  them  in  Europe. 
This  was  no  doubt  the  foundation  of  the  liberty 
still  allowed  to  unmarried  women  in  all  ranks 
of  life  in  America,  and  which  is  now  universally 
regarded  as  proper  and  of  most  beneficial  effect 
in  the  development  of  their  minds  and  characters. 
The  crudeness  and  simplicity — or  innocence,  as 
the  marquis  and  his  translator  called  it — which 
sometimes  attended  this  custom  in  colonial  times 
283 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

with  rather  unfortunate  results  soon  wore  away 
after  the  Revolution,  and  more  precautions  were 
taken. 

Among  the  Connecticut  people  there  was  also 
the  practice  of  courtship  by  bundling,  which 
has  been  already  referred  to  as  prevailing  in 
Massachusetts,  New  York,  and  New  Jersey. 
It  has  usually,  however,  like  the  blue  laws, 
been  treated  under  the  heading  of  Connecticut, 
a  commonwealth  which  seems  destined  to  bear 
so  much  of  the  burden  of  everything  peculiar  or 
irregular  which  happened  in  New  England. 

Bundling,  in  all  probability,  originated  in  a 
habit  which  prevailed  very  widely  in  early 
times  in  America,  especially  on  the  frontier, 
where  the  cabins  were  often  composed  of  only 
one  room  and  a  loft.  In  the  lower  room  the 
whole  family,  father,  mother,  sons,  and  daugh 
ters,  ate  and  slept,  or  sometimes  they  all  slept  in 
the  loft  above,  which  was  seldom  divided.  In 
winter  the  extreme  cold  and  in  summer  the  heat 
made  the  lower  room  much  to  be  preferred. 

When  a  chance  traveller  stopped  for  a  night's 
lodging  he  could  not  be  refused  and  told  to  go 
sleep  on  the  ground  in  the  woods.  He  was 
taken  in,  and  slept  in  the  same  room  with  the 
rest  of  the  family,  and  often  in  the  same  bed. 
We  have  already  given  an  instance  in  Virginia, 
related  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Burnaby,  in  which 
284 


The  Land'  of  Steady  Habits 

mother,  father,  daughter,  and  traveller  all  got 
into  the  same  bed.  Such  incidents  were  com 
mon,  are  described  in  numerous  books  re 
lating  to  the  frontiers,  and  may  still  be  met  with 
in  some  of  the  wild  regions  on  the  borders  of 
Kentucky  and  Tennessee. 

The  Abbe  Robin,  who  was  in  Connecticut  in 
1781,  says  in  his  Travels,-— 

"  The  Americans  of  these  parts  are  very  hospitable ; 
they  have  commonly  but  one  bed  in  the  house,  and  the 
chaste  spouse,  altho'  she  were  alone,  would  divide  it  with 
her  guest,  without  hesitation  or  fear.  What  history  relates 
of  the  virtues  of  the  young  Lacedemonian  women  is  far 
less  extraordinary.  There  is  such  a  confidence  in  the  pub 
lic  virtue  that,  from  Boston  to  Providence,  I  have  often 
met  young  women  travelling  alone  on  horseback,  or  in 
small  riding  chairs,  through  the  woods,  even  when  the  day 
was  far  upon  the  decline." 

In  homes  of  this  sort,  especially  in  wild 
places,  when  a  young  man  came  to  court  one  of 
the  daughters  of  the  family,  he  was  compelled  to 
sit  with  her  in  the  room  that  was  common  to  all 
if  it  was  winter.  He  had  worked  all  day,  as 
every  man  was  compelled  to  do  in  those  places. 
The  evening  was  the  only  time  for  seeing  the 
young  woman  of  his  fancy,  and  he  had  perhaps 
walked  five  miles  or  more  to  reach  her  house. 
It  was  natural  to  give  him  as  good  accommo 
dation  as  was  given  to  the  stray  traveller.  The 
285 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

parents  for  the  sake  of  keeping  warm  retired  to 
bed  early,  or  lay  down  on  the  floor  of  the  cabin 
and  covered  themselves  with  blankets  or  skins, 
and  the  young  woman  and  her  friend  covered 
themselves  in  the  same  way  near  by  them  to 
carry  on  their  conversation.  The  custom  gradu 
ally  spread  until  it  was  universally  accepted  and 
believed  to  be  entirely  innocent. 

One  reason  always  given  in  justification  was 
that  it  saved  fuel  and  lights  and  prevented  suffer 
ing  from  cold ;  and  when  other  countries  are 
investigated,  we  find  similar  customs  growing  out 
of  the  same  necessity  and  supported  by  similar 
reasons.  In  many  parts  of  Great  Britain,  and 
especially  in  Wales,  courtship  by  bundling  has 
prevailed  down  to  quite  recent  times,  and  seems 
to  have  originated  in  the  same  habits  which  are 
said  to  have  been  the  cause  of  it  in  America. 

"  At  night  a  bed  of  rushes  was  laid  down  along  one  side 
of  the  room,  covered  with  a  coarse  kind  of  cloth,  made  in 
the  country,  called  bryc/tan^and  all  the  household  lay  down 
on  this  bed  in  common,  without  changing  their  dresses. 
The  fire  was  kept  burning  through  the  night,  and  the 
sleepers  maintained  their  warmth  by  lying  closely."  (Stiles, 
<l  Bundling  in  America,"  23.) 

The  customs  of  rude  people  are  often  very 
shocking  to  the  civilized,  and  sometimes  the  civ 
ilized   have  peculiar  fashions.     In    France   dis 
tinguished  ladies  used   to  lie  in  bed  while  their 
286 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

guests,  both  men  and  women,  sat  about  the  room 
and  talked  to  them.  In  Holland  bundling  pre 
vailed  among  some  classes,  and  was  there  called 
queesting.  It  is  said  to  have  been  sanctioned 
by  the  "  most  circumspect  parents,"  and  the 
origin  of  it  traced  to  the  economy  of  the  people, 
who  wished  to  save  fuel  and  candles  in  the  long 
winter  evenings.  Switzerland  was  also  troubled 
with  it. 

In  the  early  times  in  New  England  we  are 
assured  by  numerous  authorities  that  the  praftice 
was  attended  with  very  few  unfortunate  results  ; 
not  so  many,  the  advocates  of  the  custom  main 
tained,  as  happened  in  the  higher  ranks  of  life, 
where  the  methods  of  courtship  were  different. 

It  was  never  countenanced  by  some  of  the 
people  ;  but  it  prevailed  in  spite  of  them,  and 
is  supposed  to  have  become  rather  general  about 
the  year  1750.  After  that  the  French  and  In 
dian  wars  began,  and  the  young  men  returning 
from  the  camp  and  army,  where  they  had  learned 
loose  vices  and  recklessness,  are  supposed  to  have 
made  sad  changes  in  the  simple  ways  of  the 
colonists.  Drunkenness  and  corruption  are  said 
to  have  greatly  increased,  and  bundling  was  de 
prived  of  any  innocence  it  possessed.  The 
evil  effe£ls  became  so  apparent  that  a  decided 
movement  was  made  against  it.  Jonathan  Ed 
wards  denounced  it  from  the  pulpit,  and  one  by 
287 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

one  the  ministers  who  had  allowed  it  to  pass  un 
noticed  joined  in  its  suppression. 

Curious  and  startling  results  were  sometimes 
produced  when  a  minister  suddenly  preached  on 
this  delicate  subject  to  a  congregation  a  large 
number  of  whom,  men  and  women,  were  bun- 
dlers  or  had  been  such  in  their  youth.  Written 
confessions  of  sin  were  common  at  that  time 
when  a  person  became  a  member  of  a  church, 
and  when  there  was  no  long  written  confession 
filed,  short  entries  were  often  made  in  the 
records.  Some  of  these  which  related  to  bun 
dling  were  in  later  and  more  self-conscious  days 
destroyed  ;  but  enough  remain  to  furnish  some 
queer  revelations.  In  one  church  one  hundred 
and  twenty-four  people  were  admitted  to  full 
membership  in  a  period  of  fourteen  years,  and 
of  these  fourteen  acknowledged  having  bundled. 
In  the  same  period  two  hundred  became  partial 
or  baptismal  members,  and  of  these  sixty-six 
pleaded  guilty. 

But  bundling  continued  all  through  the  cen 
tury,  and  is  supposed  not  to  have  entirely  ceased 
as  an  allowable  practice  until  about  1790  or 
1800,  when  changing  circumstances,  education, 
and  the  continued  attacks  of  the  reformers  accom 
plished  its  end.  It  had  its  defenders  even  among 
elderly  persons,  and  their  arguments  as  collected 
in  Dr.  Stiles' s  book  are  very  amusing. 
288 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits  • 

As  late  as  the  year  1775  tne  custom  seems  to 
have  been  regarded  with  the  most  perfect  inno 
cence  in  some  places.  Miss  Foote  in  her  diary 
speaks  of  her  sister  Ellen  bundling  with  a  young 
man  "  till  sun  about  3  hours  high,"  as  if  it  was  a 
matter  of  course,  and  a  few  weeks  afterwards 
they  were  "cried"  and  married.  In  1784  we 
find  Mrs.  John  Adams  referring  to  it  in  a  letter, 
in  a  joking  way,  as  still  flourishing  and  well 
known. ^  The  people  of  Cape  Cod,  it  is  said, 
held  out  longest  against  the  efforts  of  the  icono 
clasts. 

The  final  blow  the  custom  received  is  believed 
to  have  been  in  1785,  when  the  reformers  pub 
lished  some  verses  on  the  subject  written  in  the 
homely  way  that  was  most  likely  to  influence  the 
lower  classes.  They  were  shrewd  enough  to  have 
them  published  in  an  almanac,  which  was  the 
surest  and  indeed  the  only  method  at  that  time 
of  reaching  great  numbers  of  such  people.  This 
made  them  self-conscious  about  the  matter ;  they 
began  to  think  that  they  were  looked  down  upon 
for  it,  which  was  a  feeling  they  had  never  had 
before. 

Counter-verses  appeared  in  defence  containing 
arguments,  and  all  that  were  written  on  both 

*  Proceedings  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  vol.  vi, 
p.  508. 

VOL.  I.— 19  289 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

sides  are  curious,  as  showing  a  state  of  affairs  and 
point  of  view  which  have  entirely  passed  away. 

"  It  shan't  be  so,  they  rage  and  storm, 
And  country  girls  in  clusters  swarm, 
And  fly  and  buzz,  like  angry  bees, 
And  vow  they'll  bundle  when  they  please. 
Some  mothers,  too,  will  plead  their  cause, 
And  give  their  daughters  great  applause, 
And  tell  them,  'tis  no  sin  nor  shame, 
For  we  your  mothers  did  the  same." 
*         *         *         *         *         *          * 

"  If  I  won't  take  my  sparks  to  bed 
A  laughing-stock  I  shall  be  made." 

"  But  where's  the  man  that  fire  can 

Into  his  bosom  take, 
Or  go  through  coals  on  his  foot  soles, 

And  not  a  blister  make  ?" 
****##*# 

"  But  last  of  all,  up  speaks  romp  Moll 

And  pleads  to  be  excused, 
For  how  can  she  e'er  married  be 
If  bundling  be  refused  ?" 

With  the  exception  of  Jonathan  Edwards, 
and  possibly  Benedict  Arnold,  Connecticut  pro 
duced  during  the  colonial  period  no  very  re 
markable  men.  Aaron  Burr,  however,  though 
born  in  New  Jersey,  was  of  Connecticut  origin 
on  both  his  father's  and  his  mother's  side.  His 
mother  was  a  daughter  of  Jonathan  Edwards. 
290 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

General  Putnam,  who  is  usually  assigned  to 
Connecticut,  was  born  in  Massachusetts,  and 
lived  in  Connecticut  after  his  twentieth  year. 
He  was  a  popular  officer  and  greatly  trusted 
by  Washington  ;  but  he  never  developed  beyond 
the  rough-and-ready  type.  There  were  few 
officers  in  the  Continental  army  more  competent 
to  hold  a  position  or  lead  an  attack  ;  but  he  was 
never  given  a  large  command,  nor  did  he  ever 
conduft  a  complicated  campaign,  or  any  of  the 
parts  of  the  art  of  war  which  require  high  Intel- 
left. 

The  most  vigorous  years  of  Putnam's  life 
were  passed  in  the  French  and  Indian  wars, 
and  he  was  rather  too  old  to  become  very  emi 
nent  in  the  Revolution,  which,  like  the  civil 
war,  demanded  for  its  foremost  military  leaders 
men  of  less  than  fifty  years.  He  was  a  rough, 
heavy  man,  with  a  broad,  good-humored,  florid 
face,  rather  unlike  the  typical  New  Englander, 
and  overflowing  with  energy  and  exuberant 
life. 

The  famous  story  of  the  wolf's  den  is  char 
acteristic  of  his  whole  career.  Having,  in  com 
pany  with  his  neighbors,  chased  a  she  wolf  into 
a  cave,  he  was  let  down  into  it  with  a  rope  tied 
to  his  legs.  He  shot  her,  and  when  he  had 
made  sure  she  was  dead,  laid  hold  of  her  by  the 
ears  and  gave  the  signal.  He  was  hauled  into 
291 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

daylight  by  the  neighbors,  dragging  the  prey 
after  him  and  tearing  his  skin  and  clothes  on  the 
sides  of  the  cavern. 

He  became  a  ranger  in  the  French  wars, 
learned  to  follow  footsteps  in  the  woods,  to  cut 
off  outposts,  and  to  creep  into  the  enemy's  camp 
at  night  for  information.  Desperate  emergencies 
and  daring  expeditions  were  the  situations  in 
which  he  delighted.  On  one  occasion,  with 
only  fifty  men,  he  ambuscaded  five  hundred 
French  and  Indians,  and  killed  and  wounded 
nearly  half  of  them.  He  captured  a  vessel  on 
Lake  Champlain  by  creeping  up  to  her  at  night 
and  wedging  her  rudder. 

He  was  not  troubled  with  aristocratic  preten 
sions.  Just  before  the  battle  of  Lexington, 
though  high  in  military  rank  and  a  man  of 
prominence  in  the  colony,  he  rode  to  Boston, 
driving  before  him  a  flock  of  one  hundred  and 
thirty  sheep  to  relieve  the  distressed  inhabitants. 
Important  people  in  both  Connecticut  and  Rhode 
Island  seem  to  have  had  no  scruples  about  work 
of  this  sort,  and  would  haul  wood  and  perform 
other  manual  labor  without  loss  of  dignity.  No 
sooner  had  he  arrived  than  he  was  entertained 
by  the  British  officers,  many  of  whom  he  had 
known  intimately  in  the  French  wars,  and  with 
whom  he  was  always  a  popular  character.  Af 
terwards,  at  the  siege  of  Boston,  he  sent  a  present 
292 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

of  some  fine  mutton  through  the  lines  to  the  wife 
of  the  British  commander. 

In  his  younger  days  he  had  been  challenged 
to  a  duel  by  one  of  them,  and  having  the  choice 
of  weapons,  decided  on  a  keg  of  powder  with  a 
slow  match  in  it,  both  of  them  to  sit  together 
on  the  keg  until  it  exploded.  The  Englishman 
soon  left  Putnam  alone  on  the  keg,  and  was  ever 
after  the  butt  of  ridicule,  for  the  keg  contained 
nothing  but  onions. 

Perhaps  the  most  characteristic  pifture  we 
have  of  him  is  just  after  the  affair  at  Noddle's 
Island.  He  had  waded  with  his  men  across  the 
flats  to  attack  the  enemy's  schooner,  and,  return 
ing  to  his  quarters  at  Cambridge,  met  General 
Ward  and  General  Warren.  He  was  exhilarated 
by  his  efforts  and  covered  to  the  waist  with 
marsh  mud.  "  I  wish,"  he  said,  "  we  could 
have  something  like  this  every  day." 

At  Bunker  Hill  he  commanded  the  fifteen 
hundred  raw  militia  who  took  part  in  the  en 
gagement,  and  their  heroic  resistance  against 
three  or  four  thousand  British  regulars,  of  whom 
they  killed  and  wounded  between  twelve  and 
fifteen  hundred,  was  doubtless  largely  due  to  his 
energy  and  leadership. 

At  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  and 
for  many  years  afterwards,  no  one  appears  to 
have  had  any  doubt  that  "  Old  Put"  was  the 
293 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

commanding  officer;  but  when  a  hundred  years 
had  passed  and  Massachusetts  orators  and  writers 
began  to  look  back  for  the  purpose  of  glorifying 
that  event,  it  seemed  impossible  that  a  Con 
necticut  officer  could  have  commanded  Massa 
chusetts  men  on  Massachusetts  soil  and  in  a 
Massachusetts  battle. 

An  attempt  was  accordingly  made  to  give  the 
credit  to  Colonel  Prescott,  who  was  a  Massa 
chusetts  man  and  commanded  that  part  of  the 
line  which  was  at  the  redoubt  on  Breed's  Hill. 
He  behaved  well  on  that  occasion,  and  held  the 
redoubt  until  driven  from  it  by  superior  force  ; 
but  he  exercised  no  authority  over  the  rest  of 
the  line,  which  extended  across  Bunker  Hill. 

Putnam,  on  the  other  hand,  not  only  had  a 
large  share  in  planning  the  battle,  but  went  up 
and  down  the  line  encouraging  and  threatening, 
and  on  his  old  white  horse  rode  to  the  rear, 
in  the  intervals  of  the  firing,  trying  in  vain  to 
bring  up  reinforcements.  When  the  retreat  be 
gan,  he  put  himself  between  the  enemy  and  his 
own  men  to  lead  them  back.  He  was  a  general 
and  outranked  Prescott,  who  was  only  a  colonel. 

Prescott  had  served  in  the  French  war,  but 
had  by  no  means  the  experience  and  reputation 
of  Putnam,  and  he  rose  to  no  great  distinction 
afterwards.  There  is  no  evidence  that  any  of 
his  contemporaries  believed  him  to  have  been 
294 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

the  commander  at  Bunker  Hill,  or  that  they 
awarded  to  him  alone  the  honors' of  that  day. 

Benedift  Arnold  was  a  native  of  Connecticut, 
and  before  his  treachery  to  the  American  cause 
was  usually  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
generals  of  the  Continental  army.  His  father 
was  originally  a  cooper  at  Norwich,  and  after 
wards,  like  many  others  in  New  England,  en 
gaged  in  commerce  with  the  West  Indies.  He 
was  successful,  but  generally  believed  to  be  dis 
honest,  took  to  drink,  and  died  in  poverty  and 
contempt.  Young  Benedict  had  greater  ability 
and  greater  corruption.  His  moral  nature  was 
rotten  to  the  core.  From  youth  to  age  he  was 
perfectly  consistent,  and  he  showed  the  same 
depravity  in  his  youth  at  Norwich  that  he  after 
wards  displayed  as  a  man  at  West  Point. 

His  physical  courage  was  perfeft.  When  a 
boy  he  liked  to  astonish  his  playmates  by  cling 
ing  to  the  arms  of  a  mill-wheel  and  passing 
under  the  water  with  it.  He  was  cruel  and 
found  pleasure  in  torturing  birds.  He  became 
a  navigator  and  a  merchant,  fought  a  duel,  beat  a 
sailor,  seized  a  wild  bull  by  the  nose  in  the 
streets  of  New  Haven,  was  reckless,  turbulent, 
defiant  of  public  opinion,  and  ended  his  mercan 
tile  career  by  a  bankruptcy  which  left  a  stain  on 
his  integrity. 

Jonathan  Edwards  deserves  particular  mention 
295 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

because  he  was  one  of  the  very  few  men  in  the 
colonies  who  had  much  of  a  reputation  in 
Europe.  Very  extravagant  language  has  been 
used  in  his  praise  by  the  descendants  of  Puritans 
and  Calvinists  in  both  England  and  America, 
and  he  has  been  called  the  greatest  of  the  sons 
of  men. 

As  a  metaphysician  and  an  astute  reasoner  on 
the  subtle  problems  of  free-will  and  predestina 
tion  his  fame  still  endures,  and  is  probably  des 
tined  to  last  a  long  time.  But  his  position  in 
New  England  was  in  a  great  measure  that  of  a 
reactionist.  Gentle  and  benevolent,  with  all  the 
liberal  and  tolerant  ideas  of  Connecticut  and 
none  of  the  bigotry  of  Massachusetts,  he  at 
tempted  to  retain  a  sort  of  enlightened  extreme 
Puritanism  based  on  pure  reason  and  logic  and 
freed  from  all  superstition. 

He  was  born  in  1703,  and  his  youth  and  early 
manhood  were  passed  in  Connecticut,  but  his 
mature  years  were  spent  at  Stockbridge,  Massa 
chusetts  ;  and  in  1758  he  was  made  president 
of  Princeton  College,  New  Jersey,  where  he 
died  shortly  afterwards  from  inoculation  of  the 
small-pox. 

He  was  a  combination  of  both  Massachusetts 

and  Connecticut  feeling,  and  was  one  of  the  few 

who  could  be  called  a  New  England  man  and 

representative  of  its  general    religious   thought; 

296 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

and  he  was  also  broadly  representative  of  Cal 
vinism. 

Long  before  he  was  twenty  years  old  we  find 
in  him  that  intense  earnestness  which  invariably 
marks  the  Puritan.  Among  the  many  reso 
lutions  he  drew  up,  one  was  significant:  "To 
live  with  all  my  might  while  I  do  live."  His 
self-examination  was  very  severe  and,  as  often 
happened  with  Puritans,  ran  at  times  into  mor 
bidness.  But  his  was  too  serene  a  nature  to  go 
very  far  in  that  direftion.  He  was  touched  by 
the  milder  tone  of  Connecticut,  and  he  was  born 
when  the  excesses  of  the  Cottons  and  Mathers 
were  passing  away. 

He  loved  to  walk  in  the  woods  and  fields,  and 
he  took  delight  in  nature,  which  for  him  was  not 
peopled  with  terrors.  His  face  in  the  portraits 
we  have  of  him  is  gentle,  serene,  and  almost 
beautiful,  in  striking  contrast  to  the  portraits  of 
the  older  Puritan  leaders. 

His  first  controversy  was  in  his  parish  at 
Northampton,  which  was  in  some  respects  a 
centre  of  opinion,  and  where  the  Half-Way 
Covenant  prevailed  in  its  greatest  extreme.  Not 
only  were  all  baptized  and  respeftable  persons 
regarded  as  church  members  and  given  the  right 
to  vote  in  church  affairs,  but  they  were  admitted 
to  the  communion,  which  was  regarded  as  a 
means  of  conversion  and  not  as  a  privilege  of 
297 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

the  eleft.  His  predecessor  in  the  parish,  Dr. 
Stoddard,  had  been  the  leader  of  these  extreme 
opinions,  and  they  were  often  called  by  his 
name. 

Edwards  endured  this  situation  for  a  time,  and 
then  in  obedience  to  his  instintfts  turned  to  re 
sist  it  and  stand  back  in  the  old  ways.  After 
the  usual  learned  contest  and  trial  he  was  com 
pelled  to  retire,  and  moved  to  Stockbridge, 
Massachusetts,  then  a  mission  station  for  the 
conversion  of  the  Indians,  but  now  better  known 
as  a  summer  resort.  Here  he  continued  his 
metaphysical  studies  and  his  contest  against  the 
Half- Way  Covenant,  which  he  detested,  and  he 
would  submit  to  no  compromise. 

He  went  more  and  more  back  to  the  ancient 
doftrines  of  Calvinism,  predestination  and  elec 
tion,  which  were  becoming  obsolete.  At  first 
he  had  been  shocked  by  them.  He  could  not 
believe  them.  He  thought  it  horrible  and 
absurd  that  God  should  at  his  mere  pleasure 
choose  a  few  to  eternal  bliss  and  send  the  rest 
to  everlasting  torment.  But  gradually,  he  knew 
not  by  what  means,  he  was  brought  back  to  these 
doftrines,  and,  to  use  his  own  language,  found 
them  exceeding  pleasant,  bright,  and  sweet.  He 
took  endless  delight,  he  tells  us,  in  ascribing 
this  absolute  sovereignty  to  God. 

St.  Augustine,  Calvin,  and  other  upholders  of 
298 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

predestination  and  ele&ion  had  proved  these 
doftrines  from  the  Scriptures.  But  as  time  passed 
such  proofs  had  ceased  to  arFe6l  men's  minds  ; 
and  Edwards,  while  not  denying  the  Scripture 
arguments,  set  out  to  prove  them  by  pure  reason 
ing  outside  of  authority  and  Scripture.  He  passed 
out  of  the  strift  domain  of  divinity,  and  joined 
the  philosophers  and  metaphysicians. 

Edwards's  great  fame  rests  principally  on  his 
essay  on  the  freedom  of  the  will.  It  is  a  short 
produclion,  covering  scarcely  two  hundred  pages, 
but  so  closely  and  exhaustively  reasoned  that  no 
one  who  has  not  mastered  it  can  pretend  to  any 
thoroughness  in  metaphysics.  Although  it  deals 
with  a  dry  subject,  no  intelligent  mind  can  fail 
to  be  interested.  One  is  led  on  and  on  by  the 
ingenious  and  powerful  reasoning,  and  some 
are  convinced  in  spite  of  themselves.  Every 
effeft,  he  says,  must  have  a  cause ;  and  if  the 
cause  of  our  afting  in  a  given  way  is  a  power 
of  choice  within  ourselves,  then  that  power  of 
choice  must  have  a  cause,  and  that  cause  another 
cause,  until  we  reach  God,  the  original  cause  of 
all  things,  who  has  foreordained  every  aftion, 
thought,  and  choice  of  man  from  the  foundation 
of  the  world. 

All  admit  that  God    is  omniscient  and  knows 
all  things  beforehand.      If  he  knows  all  things 
beforehand,  he  either  approves  them  all  or  he 
299 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

disapproves  them  all ;  he  is  either  willing  that 
they  should  be  or  he  is  not  willing  that  they 
should  be  ;  but  with  a  being  of  infinite  power 
to  be  willing  that  they  should  be  is  to  decree 
them.  No  one  is  absolutely  happy  unless  every 
thing  is  happening  in  accordance  with  his  wishes. 
God  is  a  being  infinitely  happy,  therefore  noth 
ing  is  happening  contrary  to  his  wishes  ;  there 
fore  he  has  decreed  all  things  that  happen,  the 
evil  as  well  as  the  good. 

In  heaven,  according  to  Edwards,  the  chief 
occupation  of  the  blessed  who  inhabit  that  abode 
is  in  listening  to  the  shrieks  of  misery  from  hell. 
In  one  of  his  sermons  he  describes  parents  ap 
proving  in  heaven  of  the  condemnation  of  their 
children,  and  rejoicing,  "  with  holy  joy  upon 
their  countenances,"  in  the  torment  of  their 
little  ones.  He  also  describes  a  faithful  pastor 
who  has  gone  to  heaven  and  spends  his  time  in 
witnessing  against  the  unregenerate  of  his  flock 
as  they  appear  for  judgment ;  how  he  reviles  and 
denounces  them,  and  the  delight  he  exhibits 
when  they  are  condemned. 

Edwards's  effort  has  been  very  properly  de 
scribed  as  an  attempt  to  stiffen  Puritanism  or 
Calvinism  and  to  restore  its  bones  and  frame 
work.  It  was  also  an  attempt  to  restore  the 
old  belief  by  the  aid  of  the  process  which  was 
destroying  it, — the  subjective  process  of  Mrs. 
300 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

Hutchinson  of  relying  on  the  inward  conscious 
ness  of  each  individual,  which  was  producing 
Unitarianism  in  Massachusetts.  The  difference 
between  Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  Edwards  was,  that 
while  Mrs.  Hutchinson  relied  on  a  somewhat 
vague  and  mystic  inward  feeling,  Edwards  relied 
more  exclusively  on  the  intellect. 

But  this  last  heroic  stand  to  stop  the  over 
whelming  tide  was  a  failure,  although  Edwards 
had  many  assistants,  both  in  America  and  Eng 
land,  showing  different  phases  of  the  contest. 
They  might  as  well  have  tried  to  stop  a  snow 
storm  or  check  the  rotation  of  the  earth. 

Edwards  made  of  himself  a  famous  metaphy 
sician,  but  his  metaphysics  did  not  accomplish 
what  he  intended  or  expected  for  his  faith. 
By  carrying  predestination  and  election  to  their 
extreme  logical  limits  he  revealed  their  weak 
nesses  and  destroyed  them.  He  showed  that 
the  freedom  of  the  will  was  a  mere  metaphysical 
puzzle  which  could  never  be  solved. 

The  Calvinistic  se£ls  of  modern  times  usually 
ignore  it  or  accept  it  as  a  mystery,  and  their 
belief  in  it  is  apt  to  be  stated  by  saying  that  pre 
destination  is  taught  in  the  Scriptures,  is  reason 
able,  and  should  be  believed  ;  free-will  is  also 
taught  in  the  Scriptures,  is  undeniable,  and  should 
be  believed.  It  is  impossible  by  human  reason 
to  reconcile  these  two  beliefs,  for  they  are  abso- 


The  Land  of  Steady  Habits 

lutely  contradictory  of  each  other ;  but,  doubt 
less,  in  the  mind  of  God  they  are  consistent. 

In  his  efforts  against  the  Half-Way  Cove 
nant  Edwards  was  more  successful ;  and,  strange 
to  say,  this  man  who  was  so  much  absorbed  in 
efforts  of  pure  intellect  was  a  revivalist.  Several 
years  before  Whitefield  and  the  Wesleys  started 
the  Great  Awakening  of  1740  Edwards  had  con 
ducted  revivals  of  his  own,  in  which,  according 
to  his  extraordinary  descriptions,  even  thoughtless 
boys  and  girls  were  carried  away  by  religion. 
This,  combined  with  his  reaction  against  the 
Half- Way  Covenant,  is  supposed  to  have  saved 
the  Connecticut  churches  from  following  those 
of  Massachusetts  into  Unitarianism. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    ISLE    OF    ERRORS 

'  1  AHE  Isle  of  Errors  and  the  Religious  Sink  of 
New  England  were  the  names  given  in 
colonial  times  to  Rhode  Island,  because  it  was 
the  refuge  of  Roger  Williams,  Mrs.  Hutchinson 
and  her  Antinomian  followers,  Gortonites,  Bap 
tists,  and  various  eccentrics  and  outcasts  who 
were  uncongenial  to  the  orthodoxy  of  Massa 
chusetts  and  Connecticut.  It  was  a  place  for 
odds  and  ends  and  miscellaneous  theology  ;  and 
Cotton  Mather  used  to  say  that  if  any  one  lost 
his  religion  he  would  be  sure  to  find  it  in  Rhode 
Island. 

Roger  Williams  and  Gorton  were  the  most 
prominent  characters  among  these  confused  and 
discordant  elements,  and  Williams  was  by  far 
the  more  sane  and  sensible.  After  his  banish 
ment  from  Massachusetts  in  1636  he  helped  to 
settle  and  build  up  Providence  at  the  head  of 
303 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

Narragansett  Bay ;  and  Mrs.  Hutchinson  and 
her  followers  performed  the  same  service  for 
Portsmouth  and  Newport  at  the  mouth  of  the 
bay. 

As  finally  constituted  Rhode  Island  was  made 
up  of  four  different  colonies, — Providence  at  the 
head  of  the  bay,  Portsmouth  and  Newport  on 
the  large  island  in  the  mouth  called  Rhode 
Island,  and  Warwick  on  the  west  shore,  a  few 
miles  south  of  Providence.  Rhode  was  a  cor 
ruption  of  Roode  or  red,  a  name  given  to  the 
island  by  the  Dutch  explorers  from  New  York. 
Newport  was  founded  largely  by  settlers  from 
Portsmouth,  and  Warwick  by  dissatisfied  per 
sons  from  the  other  three  towns. 

The  ruling  spirit  at  Warwick  was  Gorton,  a 
rough,  pugnacious,  honest-hearted  mystic,  who 
had  arrived  in  Boston  at  the  time  of  the  Anti- 
nomian  difficulties.  He  spent  a  short  time  at 
Plymouth,  where  his  wife's  servant  got  into 
trouble  for  smiling  in  church  and  was  about  to 
be  driven  from  the  town  as  a  common  vagabond. 
Gorton  defended  her,  and  this,  combined  with 
his  heresies,  caused  his  banishment.  He  was  a 
strange  creature  who  had  caught  up  some  of  the 
ideas  of  the  Reformation  and  had  begun  to  work 
out  religion  for  himself. 

He  had  freed  himself,  like  Roger  Williams, 
from  every  kind  of  dogma,  formalism,  and  church 
3°4 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

organization.  Sermons,  he  said,  were  lies  and 
tales,  churches  divided  platforms,  and  baptism  a 
vanity.  When  he  first  went  to  Rhode  Island  he 
refused  to  submit  himself  to  the  civil  authority, 
because  it  was  self-constituted  and  without  recog 
nition  from  England  and  had  been  altered  from 
what  it  had  been  at  first.  These  queer  opinions 
and  his  unbearable  insolence  to  the  magistrates 
were  too  much  even  for  the  liberals  of  Ports 
mouth,  and  they  banished  him. 

He  went  to  Providence,  and  abused  all  the 
ministers  and  denied  the  necessity  of  any  ordi 
nances  of  church  or  state,  until  poor  Roger 
Williams  was  almost  distrafted  ;  for  Williams 
was  practical  at  the  exadl  point  where  Gorton 
was  unbalanced,  and  although  he  denied  the 
validity  of  every  form  of  religion,  admitted  that 
an  organization  of  some  sort,  at  least  for  the 
state,  was  absolutely  essential. 

Gorton's  followers  became  so  numerous  and 
violent  in  their  attacks  on  law  and  govern 
ment  that  some  of  the  people  appealed  to  Massa 
chusetts  for  advice,  which  gave  the  Puritans  the 
sort  of  opportunity  they  were  always  glad  to 
have.  Without  the  least  show  of  right  they 
laid  claim  to  all  the  land  at  Providence  and  also 
at  Gorton's  home,  Warwick,  in  the  hope  of  en 
ticing  him  to  Boston,  where  they  could  have  a 
theological  excitement  with  his  queer  opinions. 

VOL.  1-20  305 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

Failing  to  entice  him,  they  sent  an  armed 
force,  which  captured  him  with  a  number  of  his 
friends,  destroyed  a  large  part  of  their  goods,  and 
appropriated  about  eighty  head  of  their  cattle. 
When  the  prisoners  reached  the  first  town  in 
Massachusetts  the  chaplain  of  the  expedition 
offered  prayer  in  the  streets,  and  proclaimed  that 
everything  had  been  done  in  a  "  holy  manner 
and  in  the  name  of  the  Lord."  At  Dorchester 
and  Boston  they  were  received  with  great 
rejoicing,  a  volley  of  musketry  was  fired  over 
their  heads,  and  the  governor  asked  God  to  bless 
and  prosper  the  soldiers  who  had  brought  them 
in.  They  were  taken  to  church  and  preached 
at  by  Cotton  ;  and  after  the  sermon  Gorton  rose 
up  and  answered  him. 

Several  trials  appear  to  have  been  held  with 
out  securing  a  conviftion,  and  meanwhile  the 
ministers  visited  the  prisoners  and  indulged 
themselves  to  the  full  in  cross-questions.  They 
were  for  putting  all  the  prisoners  to  death  ;  but 
some  of  the  General  Court  dissented,  and  accord 
ing  to  Gorton  the  motion  for  death  was  lost  by 
only  two  votes.  They  were,  however,  put  to 
work  in  chains,  and  had  been  distributed  to  the 
towns  for  this  purpose,  when  the  indignation  of 
the  disfranchised  majority  became  so  great  that 
they  were  set  free  and  ordered  to  leave  the 
colony  within  fourteen  days,  which  was  reduced 
306 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

to  two  hours  when  it  was  discovered  that  they 
were  making  friends  among  the  people. 

Williams's  career  was  less  eventful  than  it  had 
been  in  Massachusetts.  He  was  in  strange  un 
certainty  on  all  questions  of  religion,  but  held 
firmly  to  his  belief  in  liberty  of  conscience.  He 
lived  in  expectation  of  a  new  revelation  which 
should  give  a  new  and  pure  commission  to  ad 
minister  the  sacraments  and  organize  churches  ; 
and  he  talked  about  a  "  great  slaughtering  of  the 
witnessess"  and  a  general  upheaval  of  society, 
which  was  to  bring  a  new  dispensation. 

Until  that  time  should  come,  he  said,  there 
was  no  authorized  ministry  or  church,  and  all 
men  should  have  liberty  to  maintain  such  minis 
try  and  worship  as  they  pleased.  At  first  he 
inclined  to  the  seel  of  the  Baptists,  became  con 
vinced  that  his  infant  baptism  had  been  invalid, 
and  had  himself  re-baptized  by  immersion.  But 
within  three  or  four  months  he  lost  confidence 
in  this  second  baptism  and  left  the  se6l  entirely. 

He  labored  hard  to  persuade  the  people 
round  him  that  liberty  was  not  license ;  but 
most  of  his  time  seems  to  have  been  occupied 
in  trying  to  convert  the  Indians ;  and  among  his 
published  papers  is  a  touching  letter  to  his  wife, 
written  when  he  was  among  the  savages,  and 
sent  to  her  with  a  bunch  of  wild  flowers. 

He  probably  understood  the  Indian  character 
3°7 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

as  well  as  any  man  in  New  England,  and  pre 
pared  a  grammar  of  their  language  which  can 
still  be  read  with  interest ;  but  he  describes  the 
difficulties  of  the  language  as  almost  insurmount 
able,  and  says  that  even  Eliot,  the  famous  Mas 
sachusetts  missionary,  who  had  translated  the 
whole  Bible  for  the  Indians,  was  often  unable  to 
make  them  understand  him. 

There  is  a  story  told  of  Eliot,  that  when,  in 
translating  the  Old  Testament,  he  came  to  the 
passage  in  the  fifth  chapter  of  the  book  of  Judges, 
which  says  that  the  mother  of  Sisera  looked  out 
at  a  window  and  cried  through  the  lattice,  he  was 
at  a  loss  for  an  Indian  word  that  meant  lattice. 
He  went  to  some  of  the  Indians  and  described 
a  lattice  to  them,  and  they  gave  him  a  word 
which  he  put  into  his  translation.  Some  time 
afterwards,  when  he  knew  more  of  the  language, 
he  discovered  that  the  word  they  had  given  him 
meant  an  eel-pot,  which  was  made  something 
like  a  basket,  and  was  the  only  sort  of  lattice 
work  the  Indians  knew  of. 

Williams  had  a  great  dislike  for  the  Quakers, 
who  were  very  numerous  in  Rhode  Island  ;  and 
he  relaxed  from  his  liberal  principles  so  far  as  to 
want  to  have  them  punished  for  using  "  thee" 
and  "  thou"  to  superiors.  When  quite  an  old 
man  he  rowed  himself  in  a  boat  thirty  miles  down 
Narragansett  Bay  to  have  a  debate  and  contro- 
308 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

versy  with  them  at  Newport,  where,  for  two  or 
three  days,  he  labored  to  convince  them  of  their 
errors,  calling  them,  in  the  language  of  the  time, 
"  bundles  of  ignorance,"  and  "  a  tongue  set  on 
fire  from  the  hell  of  lies  and  fury."  One  of  his 
best-known  books  was  called  "  George  Fox 
Digged  out  of  his  Burrows,"  which  was  intended 
to  be  a  double  joke,  for  Burrows  was  a  promi 
nent  Quaker  in  the  province. 

Rhode  Island  was  a  strange  New  England 
colony,  made  up  of  Gortonites,  Antinomians, 
Quakers,  Baptists,  and  all  sorts  of  nondescripts, 
who  were  wandering  without  a  guide  in  the  new 
found  liberty  of  the  Reformation,  and  after  cen 
turies  of  restraint  trying  to  think  for  themselves. 
Some  declared  that  there  should  be  no  governors 
or  officers  or  punishments,  because  all  were  equal 
in  Christ,  that  it  was  murder  and  contrary  to 
the  Gospel  to  execute  a  criminal,  and  that  no 
man  was  bound  by  a  law  that  he  could  declare 
to  be  contrary  to  his  conscience.  There  were 
tumults  and  riots  as  a  consequence  of  these  opin 
ions  and  several  trials  for  high  treason. 

Roger  Williams  rose  to  the  emergency,  and 
showed  his  good  sense  and  strength  of  character 
by  laying  down  the  dividing  line  between'liberty 
and  law  exactly  as  it  is  understood  to-day,  and 
in  very  much  the  same  language  in  which  it 
would  be  now  expressed.  All  the  liberty  of 
309 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

conscience,  he  said,  that  he  had  ever  contended 
for  was  that  Protestants,  Papists,  Jews,  and  Turks 
should  not  be  forced  to  any  prayers  but  their 
own  ;  beyond  that  they  must  obey  the  civil  law. 

He  used  the  happy  illustration  of  the  ship, 
which  was  afterwards  often  repeated.  The 
crew  and  passengers,  he  said,  are  not  compelled 
to  follow  the  captain's  religion  ;  they  may  say 
any  prayers  they  please ;  but  they  must  all  obey 
the  captain's  orders  in  discipline  and  navigation. 
He  had  a  fierce  controversy  with  a  certain 
William  Harris,  who  wrote  a  book  to  prove  that 
all  kinds  of  taxation,  laws,  and  magistrates  ought 
to  be  abolished,  and  he  had  Harris  indidled  for 
treason. 

We  have  the  record  of  a  curious  debate  in 
Providence,  in  which  the  wife  of  one  Verin  in 
sisted  on  going  to  hear  the  sermons  of  Roger 
Williams  and  her  husband  insisted  on  restraining 
her.  It  was  gravely  argued  on  one  side  that 
liberty  of  conscience  could  never  be  allowed  to 
extend  to  a  breach  of  an  ordinance  of  God,  such 
as  the  subjection  of  wives  to  their  husbands ; 
that  Verin  was  as  conscientious  in  restraining  his 
wife  as  she  was  conscientious  in  going ;  that  they 
had  all  fled  from  Massachusetts  rather  than  break 
a  law  of  God  to  please  men,  and  would  they  now 
break  a  law  of  God  to  please  a  woman  ?  But 
Mrs.  Verin  triumphed  in  the  end,  and  her  hus- 
310 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

band  was  restrained  from  the  liberty  of  voting 
for  having  attempted  to  restrain  the  liberty  of  his 
wife.  All  these  difficulties  experienced  in  prac 
tically  administering  the  principle  of  liberty  were 
very  gratifying  to  the  Puritans  ;  for  they  had 
always  declared  that  liberty  of  conscience  would 
lead  to  lawlessness,  immorality,  and  atheism. 

The  liberty  and  the  strange  variety  of  opinion 
in  Rhode  Island  developed  an  extreme  indi 
vidualism  and  an  extreme  independence  among 
the  towns ;  and  this  is  the  key-note  of  the 
colony's  history  for  two  hundred  years.  Each 
town  was  a  separate  sovereignty,  and  nearly 
every  one  of  them  had  at  times  entertained  the 
notion  of  getting  from  the  crown  a  charter  for 
itself  as  a  colony  without  regard  to  the  others. 

By  the  exertions  of  Williams  a  charter  was 
obtained  in  1643  for  all  the  towns,  but  nearly 
three  years  passed  away  before  they  could  be 
persuaded  to  unite  under  it.  The  charter  was 
very  short,  and  was  the  freest  ever  given.  It 
simply  said  that  the  towns  of  Providence,  Ports 
mouth,  and  Newport  might  unite  together  and 
make  any  form  of  government  the  majority 
should  think  best,  and  it  gave  them  the  corpo 
rate  name  of  Providence  Plantations. 

When  at  last  the  towns  decided  to  accept 
this  charter  the  government  they  framed  under 
it  showed  a  most  jealous  regard  for  their  inde- 
3" 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

pendence.  They  created  a  president  of  the 
colony,  with  one  assistant  from  each  town,  but 
these  assistants  had  no  legislative  power.  Any 
laws  that  were  to  be  made  were  first  proposed 
and  passed  by  one  of  the  towns  and  then  sent 
about  to  the  other  towns  for  acceptance. 

When  a  proposed  law  had  run  the  gauntlet  of 
all  the  towns  it  was  handed  to  a  committee  com 
posed  of  six  men,  one  from  each  town,  called 
the  General  Court ;  and  if  this  committee  de 
cided  that  the  law  had  been  concurred  in  by  a 
majority  of  the  colony,  it  stood  as  law  until  the 
next  General  Assembly  of  all  the  people,  who 
finally  decided  whether  it  should  continue. 
There  has  seldom  been  a  more  elaborate  system 
of  self-defence  against  the  supposed  dangers  of 
centralization.  The  towns  retained  all  their 
rights  of  local  government,  and  their  union 
under  the  charter  was  simply  a  league. 

So  loose  was  the  union  of  the  towns  under 
the  charter  that  at  one  time  Portsmouth  and 
Newport  attempted  to  detach  themselves  from 
the  others  and  join  the  New  England  confed 
eracy.  Failing  in  this,  Codington,  one  of  their 
leading  men,  went  to  England  and  procured  a 
commission  incorporating  them  as  a  separate 
colony.  For  three  years  there  were  two  gov 
ernments,  one  at  Providence  and  the  other  at 
Newport,  holding  separate  assemblies  for  mak- 
312 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

ing  laws,  the  cause  of  much  strife  and  bitterness 
and  great  delight  to  the  Puritans. 

In  1663  a  charter  was  obtained  from  the 
crown  which  made  a  close  union  of  the  towns, 
and  was  very  much  like  the  Connecticut  charter 
which  Winthrop  had  obtained  the  year  before. 
It  established  religious  liberty,  allowed  the 
people  to  eleft  their  own  governors  and  make 
their  own  laws  as  they  pleased,  and  was  so  lib 
eral  in  every  way  that  it  was  not  considered 
necessary  to  alter  it  in  the  Revolution,  and  the 
people  lived  under  it  until  1842. 

After  Charles  II.  came  to  the  throne  and 
Massachusetts  lost  her  charter,  Rhode  Island 
was  as  lucky  as  Connecticut  in  retaining  hers. 
There  was  no  romantic  episode  of  an  oak  ;  but 
when  Andros  came  to  Rhode  Island  for  the 
charter  it  was  quietly  put  out  of  sight.  He 
never  obtained  it,  and  when  William  and  Mary 
ascended  the  throne  the  charter  was  brought 
forth  and  the  old  government  restored  under  it, 
as  in  Connecticut. 

In  the  interval  while  the  charter  was  in  hid 
ing  Rhode  Island  showed  a  tendency  to  split  up 
into  fragments.  The  town  of  Providence  sent 
an  address  to  the  king  resigning  its  charter, 
asking  to  be  annexed  to  the  general  government 
of  New  England,  and  disowning  the  address  sent 
by  the  Rhode  Island  Assembly.  Similar  ad- 
313 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

dresses  were  sent  by  the  Quakers  and  by  various 
voluntary  associations  of  citizens. 

Indifference  towards  the  rest  of  the  world 
and  a  lack  of  cohesion  among  themselves  were 
for  a  long  time  the  prominent  traits  of  the 
people,  traits  which  might  perhaps  show  them 
selves  even  now  if  an  occasion  should  arise. 
Rhode  Island  was  the  last  State  to  accept  the 
National  Constitution  and  join  the  Union.  For 
many  months  after  the  other  States  had  given  in 
their  consent  and  the  general  government  had 
been  organized  and  put  in  operation  Rhode 
Island  continued  to  retain  her  autonomy,  and 
stood  alone  as  an  independent  country  in  the 
midst  of  the  American  Union.  When  at  last 
the  little  one  condescended  to  join  the  company 
of  the  giants,  the  resolution  accepting  the  Con 
stitution  was  passed  by  a  majority  of  only  two 
votes. 

As  late  as  the  year  1842  there  was  a  formi 
dable  rebellion  in  Rhode  Island.  Many  of  the 
people  had  long  been  dissatisfied  with  the  old 
charter  granted  by  Charles  II.  and  with  the  law 
which  restricted  the  right  of  voting  to  free 
holders.  They  formed  voluntary  associations 
in  different  places,  and  these  associations  called 
a  convention  to  frame  a  constitution,  and  this 
without  any  authority  from  the  government 
under  the  old  charter  and  without  the  least 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

regard  for  it.  The  new  constitution  was  put  to 
the  vote  of  the  people,  and  when  its  upholders 
believed  that  it  had  been  adopted  by  a  majority, 
they  organized  a  government  with  regularly  ap 
pointed  officers.  An  individual  named  Dorr 
was  eledted  governor,  and  the  affair  is  now 
known  as  the  Dorr  Rebellion. 

Rhode  Island  was  once  more  under  two  con 
flifting  governments.  The  charter  government, 
however,  had  no  idea  of  submitting  to  such  a 
situation.  They  declared  martial  law,  suppressed 
Dorr  and  his  followers  by  force,  and  prepared 
a  new  constitution  of  their  own,  which,  having 
been  accepted  by  the  people,  has  ever  since  re 
mained  the  constitution  of  Rhode  Island. 

The  extreme  views  on  the  subject  of  liberty 
prevented  that  unity  and  compactness  of  organi 
zation  which  gave  Connecticut  and  Massachu 
setts  their  success  as  colonies.  The  discordant 
sefts  always  tended  to  disintegrate  the  commu 
nity  ;  and  they  were  so  much  opposed  to  ecclesias- 
ticism  and  religious  organization  of  any  kind  that 
their  ministers  were  inferior.  Their  churches 
were  not  supported  by  taxation,  and  the  people 
were  too  poor  or  too  much  afraid  of  encouraging 
ministerial  tyranny  to  subscribe.  The  ministers 
were  usually  farmers,  without  salary  or  any  means 
of  support  except  their  own  labor.  They  had 
no  leisure  for  study  and  little  interest  in  it. 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

As  a  consequence  education  was  neglected  ; 
there  was  no  system  of  schools  like  those  of 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut,  and  the  public 
school  system  was  not  adopted  until  1828.  In 
faft,  an  attempt  in  Providence  in  1768  to  estab 
lish  free  schools  showed  that  the  lower  classes 
of  the  people  were  decidedly  opposed  to  them. 
Private  schools  were  few  and  inferior ;  but  the 
Baptists  made  some  very  creditable  exertions, 
and  in  1764  founded  the  college  which  is  now 
Brown  University. 

It  has  often  been  observed  that  every  settle 
ment  in  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  grew  up 
round  a  meeting-house  and  a  graveyard.  But 
it  was  very  different  in  Rhode  Island.  Religious 
meetings  were  for  a  long  time  held  in  the  fields 
or  in  private  houses.  The  town  of  Providence 
was  nearly  a  century  old  before  it  had  a  steepled 
church.  There  was  not  even  a  meeting-house 
until  the  year  1700,  and  the  one  then  erected 
was  shaped  like  a  hay-cap,  with  a  fireplace  in 
the  middle,  the  smoke  escaping  through  a  hole 
in  the  roof. 

Individualism  showed  itself  even  in  death. 
There  were  no  common  burying-places  ;  fami 
lies  and  se£ls  had  their  own  ;  and  in  later  years 
there  was  often  a  difficulty  experienced  in  laying 
out  the  streets  of  a  town  so  as  to  avoid  some 
Rhode  Islander's  last  stand  for  independence. 
316 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

For  the  first  fifty  or  sixty  years  Rhode  Island 
struggled  for  bare  existence,  and  at  the  end  of 
that  time  her  people  numbered  only  ten  thou 
sand.  They  were  scattered  in  small  settlements 
clinging  round  the  shores  of  Narragansett  Bay, 
hemmed  in  on  three  sides  by  the  powerful  and 
jealous  colonies  of  Massachusetts  and  Connefti- 
cut. 

Their  boundaries  were  always  in  dispute,  and 
were  not  finally  settled  until  the  year  1883. 
Several  times  in  the  history  of  the  colony  she 
seemed  on  the  point  of  being  dismembered  and 
divided  among  her  neighbors.  So  strong  were 
the  fears  and  the  ill  feeling  that  for  many  years 
the  people  would  build  no  highways  to  connect 
with  the  other  colonies.  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut  had  no  love  for  the  Isle  of  Errors, 
and  would  not  admit  her  to  the  New  England 
confederacy  of  1643. 

At  one  time  the  Plymouth  colony  claimed  all 
the  way  to  the  bay  on  the  eastern  side,  and  also 
the  island  on  which  stood  Portsmouth  and  New 
port.  Massachusetts  claimed  the  rest  of  the 
eastern  side  and  down  the  western  side  as  far  as 
Warwick,  where  lived  the  irrepressible  Gorton. 
Connecticut  claimed  what  was  left  of  the  west 
ern  shore.  If  the  Rhode  Island  people  had 
admitted  the  claims  of  their  enemies  they  would 
have  had  to  live  in  the  water. 
3'7 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

Rhode  Island  was  not  fairly  started  till  1700, 
and  did  not  begin  to  flourish  until  after  the 
Revolution.  Her  people  produced  nothing  that 
was  of  any  great  value  in  the  markets  of  the 
world.  They  had  no  great  staple  for  export 
like  the  tobacco  of  Virginia  or  the  fish  of 
Massachusetts.  Their  harbors  were  as  good 
as  those  of  Massachusetts,  but  they  had  not 
the  Puritan  aptitude  for  commerce  and  ship 
building. 

In  1680,  in  answer  to  the  questions  of  the 
Board  of  Trade,  they  said  that  they  had  no 
ships,  only  a  few  sloops ;  that  their  only  ex 
ports  were  horses  and  provisions ;  that  they  had 
no  fishing  trade  and  no  merchants ;  that  the 
people  lived  chiefly  by  improving  and  cultivat 
ing  the  wilderness  land.  This  statement  must 
be  taken  with  some  allowance,  for  the  colonists 
were  always  careful  in  their  answers  to  the 
British  government  not  to  boast  of  their  wealth 
and  success,  and  they  were  apt  to  understate 
their  population. 

After  the  year  1700  a  slight  improvement  be 
gan.  Ships  were  owned  in  the  colony,  and 
Newport  became  a  seat  of  commerce.  In  the 
year  1763  one  hundred  and  eighty-four  foreign- 
going  vessels  and  three  hundred  and  fifty-two 
coasters  cleared  from  the  custom-house  of  the 
little  town,  which  is  now  chiefly  known  as  a 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

fashionable  watering-place.  Two-thirds  of 
these  vessels  are  said  to  have  been  owned  in 
Newport,  and  together  with  the  fishing-boats 
employed  twenty-two  hundred  sailors.  The 
profits  of  the  slave-trade  were  also  considerable, 
and  many  vessels  were  engaged  in  it. 

The  colony  produced  one  remarkable  man, 
General  Greene,  who  was  brought  up  a  Quaker, 
and  in  the  Revolution  was  usually  regarded  as 
the  ablest  soldier  of  the  Continental  army  after 
Washington. 

When  the  French  army  came  to  assist  the 
patriot  cause  in  the  summer  of  1780  they  landed 
at  Newport,  and  there  the  French  officers  re 
ceived  their  first  impressions  of  the  strange  New 
World  of  which  they  had  heard  so  much.  Some 
of  the  descriptions  they  have  left  are  interesting. 

Claude  Blanchard,  who  was  the  commissary 
of  supplies,  preferred  Providence  to  Newport. 
Providence  was,  he  said,  more  lively  and  had 
more  commerce.  But  he  describes  the  wooden 
houses  of  Newport  as  very  pretty.  He  visited 
a  school  where  the  children  were  all  neatly  clad, 
the  room  very  clean,  and  the  master  an  excellent 
man. 

"  I  saw  the  writing  of  these  children,  it  appeared  to  me 

to  be  handsome,  among  others  that  of  a  young  girl  nine  or 

ten  years  old,  very  pretty  and   very  modest,  and  such  as  I 

would  like  my  own  daughter  to  be  when  she  is  as  old}   she 

319 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

was  called  Abigail  Earl  as  I  perceived  upon  her  copy-book, 
on  which  her  name  was  written.  I  wrote  it  myself,  add 
ing  to  it  *  very  pretty.'  " 

He  saw  a  great  deal  of  the  country  between 
Providence  and  Boston.  The  men  were  tall 
and  affable  and  wore  good  clothes ;  the  women 
fair-skinned  and  good-looking.  They  lived  easy 
lives,  cultivating  small  farms  which  they  owned, 
and  in  winter  seemed  to  have  nothing  much  to 
do  but  sit  by  the  fire  with  their  wives  and  eat 
a  great  many  meals.  They  drank  cider  and 
Madeira  mixed  with  water. 

He  found  wall-papers,  some  of  them  quite 
handsome,  in  use  instead  of  tapestry,  and  he  was 
surprised  to  find  carpets  common,  for  they  were 
then  only  just  coming  into  use.  They  even 
used  them,  he  says,  on  the  stairs.  There  was 
a  great  deal  of  good  furniture,  especially  among 
the  better  classes,  and  they  were  very  choice  in 
their  cups,  vases,  and  decanters.  Everywhere, 
including  Boston,  he  found  what  he  describes  as 
"immaculate  cleanliness,"  and  he  comments  on 
this  quite  often. 

He  had  some  difficulty  with  English ;  but 
found  two  persons  who  could  converse  with 
him  in  Latin, — one  a  Hessian  dragoon,  who 
had  deserted  from  the  British,  and  the  other  a 
native  New  Englander.  Some  of  the  manners 
of  the  people  puzzled  him. 
320 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

"  I  dined  at  the  house  of  a  young  American  lady  where 
M.  de  Capellis  lodged.  ...  It  is  a  great  contrast  to  our 
manners  to  see  a  young  lady  (she  was  twenty  at  the  most) 
lodging  and  entertaining  a  young  man.  I  shall  certainly 
have  occasion  to  explain  the  causes  of  this  singularity." 

Chastellux  on  his  arrival  with  the  fleet  was 
very  busy  with  his  military  duties,  and  has 
nothing  to  say  of  Newport.  He  was  anxious 
to  get  away  as  quickly  as  possible  to  explore 
and  study  all  the  colonies,  and  was  soon  on  the 
road  to  Connecticut ;  but  he  stopped  for  a  time 
in  Providence,  with  which  he  was  very  much 
pleased,  commenting  on  the  neatness  and  good 
arrangement  of  the  houses,  and  he  breakfasted 
with  Colonel  Peck. 

"This  little  establishment  where  comfort  and  simplicity 
reign  gave  an  idea  of  that  sweet  and  serene  state  of  happi 
ness  which  appears  to  have  taken  refuge  in  the  New  World, 
after  compounding  it  with  pleasure,  to  which  it  has  left  the 
Old." 

The  Abbe  Robin,  who  visited  Rhode  Island 
the  next  year,  says  that  before  the  arrival  of  the 
fleet  and  army  the  Americans  had  a  great  dislike 
for  the  French. 

"  They  looked  upon  them  as  a  people  bowed  down 
beneath  the  yoke  of  despotism,  given  up  to  superstition, 
slavery,  and  prejudice,  mere  idolaters  in  their  public  worship, 
and,  in  short,  a  kind  of  light  nimble  machines,  deformed 
to  the  last  degree,  incapable  of  anything  solid  or  consistent ; 
entirely  taken  up  with  the  dressing  of  their  hair  and  paint- 
VOL.  I.— 21  321 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

ing  their  faces ;   without  delicacy  or  fidelity,  and  paying  no 
respeft  even  to  the  most  sacred  obligations." 

This  was,  of  course,  the  prejudice  which  all 
Englishmen  had  at  that  time  for  their  ancient 
enemy  across  the  channel.  It  was  so  strong 
that  on  the  arrival  of  the  fleet  at  Newport  the 
people  deserted  the  town.  To  overcome  their 
fears  and  dislike  the  French  officers  established 
the  strictest  discipline  and  took  advantage  of 
every  occasion  to  show  politeness  and  kind  feel 
ing.  They  were  very  successful  in  this,  as  the 
Abbe  tells  us,  and  before  long  the  most  pleasant 
relations  were  established. 

Part  of  their  endeavor  to  encourage  friendli 
ness  was  abstaining  from  flirtations,  and  both  the 
Abbe  and  Chastellux  comment  on  this  in  true 
French  fashion.  When  the  fleet  was  afterwards 
at  Boston,  Chastellux  tells  us  that  "  though  the 
officers  were  admitted  by  the  ladies  of  Boston  to 
the  greatest  familiarity,  not  a  single  indiscretion, 
not  even  the  most  distant  attempt  at  impertinence, 
ever  disturbed  the  confidence  or  innocent  har 
mony  of  this  pleasing  intercourse." 

The  Abbe,  however,  after  a  sort  of  half  com 
plaint  that  the  French  nation  had  long  been 
upbraided  "  for  paying  no  regard  to  the  most 
sacred  of  all  connexions  when  their  gallantry 
is  concerned,"  admits  that  Newport  had  af 
forded  several  examples.  One  instance  he  re- 


The  Isle  of  Errors 

lates  of  a  French  officer  who  won  the  affedlions 
of  a  young  woman  whose  husband  seems  to  have 
been  equal  to  the  occasion. 

"  He  became  more  assiduous  and  complaisant  to  her  than 
ever;  with  sorrow  and  despair  in  his  soul,  he  showed  a 
countenance  serene  and  satisfied.  He  received  at  his  house 
with  attention  and  civility  the  very  officer  who  was  the 
author  of  his  misfortune  ;  but  by  the  assistance  of  a  friend 
so  contrived  matters  as  to  hinder  him  from  any  private 
interviews  with  her  whatever.  These  repeated  disappoint 
ments  appeared  to  the  Frenchman  to  be  mere  effects  of 
chance ;  he,  however,  grew  sullen  and  peevish  upon  it,  and 
consequently  became  less  amiable  in  the  eyes  of  the  lady, 
and  her  husband  more  so  than  ever ;  and  thus  that  virtue 
which  had  not  lost  all  its  claims  to  her  seduced  heart  soon 
recalled  it  to  its  duty.  Such  a  procedure  as  this  in  so  deli 
cate  an  affair  discovers  great  knowledge  of  the  human 
heart,  and  still  more  of  dominion  over  itself." 


CHAPTER    V 

THE    WHITE     MOUNTAINS     AND    THE    GREEN 

XTEW  HAMPSHIRE,  like  Connefticut  and 
Rhode  Island,  was  an  offshoot  from  Massa 
chusetts,  and  out  of  New  Hampshire  arose  Ver 
mont.  In  the  colonial  period  New  Hampshire 
can  hardly  be  said  to  have  had  a  separate  history  ; 
for  a  large  part  of  the  time  she  was  under  the 
dire6l  government  of  Massachusetts  and  always 
under  Massachusetts  influence. 

Stray  adventurers  had  founded  Portsmouth  and 
Dover  as  early  as  1623.  In  1638  Exeter  was 
settled  by  Wheelwright  and  a  number  of  Anti- 
nomians  who  had  been  banished  from  Massachu 
setts  during  the  difficulties  with  Mrs.  Hutchin- 
son.  Hampden  was  founded  in  the  same  year  by 
Puritans  from  England  and  Massachusetts. 

The  men  who  settled  Portsmouth  and  Dover 
had  been  sent  out  by  two  enterprising  individ 
uals,  Mason  and  Gorges,  who  had  obtained 
324 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

enormous  grants  of  land  from  the  Plymouth 
Company.  Gorges  was  a  naval  officer,  a  friend 
and  companion  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh.  Mason 
was  a  merchant  and  at  one  time  governor  of 
Newfoundland.  In  1629  these  two  men  divided 
their  property.  Gorges  took  Maine  and  Mason 
took  New  Hampshire.  Maine  never  became  a 
separate  colony,  but  remained  under  the  jurisdic 
tion  of  Massachusetts  until  1819. 

Mason  had  very  grand  ideas  about  New 
Hampshire,  his  vast  estate  of  rocks  and  pine- 
trees.  He  looked  forward  to  renting  it  out  to 
tenants,  like  an  English  manor,  he  himself  to 
grow  rich  on  the  proceeds,  and,  like  William 
Penn  and  Lord  Baltimore,  become  famous  as  the 
founder  of  an  empire.  But  it  was  never  anything 
but  a  dream.  Men  who  had  to  contend  with 
the  savages,  the  long  winters,  and  the  barren  soil 
of  New  Hampshire  were  not  the  sort  who  had 
rent  to  pay  or  who  were  willing  to  pay  it  to  an' 
absentee  landlord.  He  sunk  his  fortune  in  the 
venture  ;  his  heirs  sunk  a  large  part  of  theirs  ; 
they  finally  lost  their  title,  and  their  claims  were 
a  source  of  annoyance  to  the  colony  for  nearly  a 
hundred  years. 

Each  of  the   four   little   towns,   Portsmouth, 

Dover,  Exeter,  and  Hampden,  was  of  the  usual 

New    England    type,    an    independent    republic 

built  up  round  a  church.      They  quarrelled  with 

325 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

each  other  continually,  and  their  progress  was 
slow.  After  twenty  years  of  existence  .the  popu 
lation  of  the  colony  had  not  reached  a  thousand. 

In  1641,  tired  of  their  separate  unprotected 
state  and  unable  to  agree  on  any  general  plan  of 
government,  they  were,  by  their  own  request, 
taken  under  the  jurisdiction  of  Massachusetts. 
The  law  which  allowed  only  church  members  to 
vote  was  relaxed  in  their  favor,  and  they  consti 
tuted  a  part  of  Massachusetts  until,  when  Mason's 
heirs  attempted  to  recover  their  rights,  the  court 
of  King's  Bench  in  England  decided  that  neither 
the  Masons  nor  Massachusetts  should  have  them, 
and  in  1680  they  were  put  under  the  direcl 
government  of  the  king. 

The  growth  of  New  Hampshire  was  very 
slow,  and  in  1730,  after  a  hundred  years'  ex 
istence,  there  were  only  about  twelve  thousand 
people.  But  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution  there 
were  supposed  to  be  about  eighty  thousand. 
Laws,  customs,  and  opinions  were  taken  from 
Massachusetts,  and  fishing  and  trade  with  the 
Indians  were  the  principal  means  of  livelihood. 

The  most  curious  occupation  in  New  Hamp 
shire  was  masting.  Officers  of  the  crown  went 
through  the  forests  and  marked  G.  R.  on  the 
tallest  and  best  pines,  and. severe  penalties  were 
inflifted  on  any  one  who  cut  one  of  these  trees 
which  were  thus  reserved  for  masts  for  the  royal 
326 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

navy.  In  winter  they  were  cut  down  under  the 
direction  of  a  mast-master,  and  the  labor  of 
hauling  them  to  the  nearest  stream  which  in 
spring  would  float  them  to  the  sea  began. 

From  fifty  to  eighty  yoke  of  oxen  were 
hitched  to  a  single  tree  to  drag  it  over  the 
snow,  the  end  of  the  tree  nearest  the  oxen 
being  raised  on  a  strong  sled.  A  long  time  was 
always  required  to  get  the  patient  beasts  started  ; 
but  when  once  "  raised,"  as  it  was  called,  they 
never  slopped  till  they  reached  the  water.  Two 
tailmen  walked  by  the  hind  yoke,  and  when  the 
tongue  of  the  sled,  in  passing  over  a  hollow 
place,  ran  up  so  high  as  to  lift  up  the  hind  yoke 
by  their  necks,  the  tailmen  seized  their  tails  and 
drew  them  outward,  so  that  in  coming  down  the 
tongue  would  not  strike  them. 

So  many  of  the  people  were  Scotch-Irish  that 
in  the  woods  and  country  districts  the  Scotch 
dialect  was  constantly  heard,  and  the  people  by 
their  firesides  told  tales  of  the  siege  of  Lon 
donderry  mingled  with  their  recent  adventures 
with  the  Indians.  And  such  fireplaces  !  They 
were  the  largest  of  any  in  the  colonies,  eight 
feet  long,  and  so  very  deep  that  the  children  had 
blocks  on  which  they  sat  far  within,  and  the 
child  farthest  in  was  the  coldest  and  could  see 
the  stars  up  the  chimney.  In  daytime,  it  is  said, 
one  could  see  to  read  inside  of  these  fireplaces. 
327 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

There  were  no  cranes  in  them,  but  a  green 
stick  called  a  lug-pole  stretched  across  high 
above  the  flame,  with  iron  trammels  hanging 
down  on  which  to  suspend  the  pots. 

Wooden  plates  and  dishes  were  largely  in  use, 
and  the  women  disliked  earthen-ware  because 
it  dulled  the  knives.  These  women  called 
their  children  bairns,  were  strong  and  hardy, 
worked  in  the  grain-fields  and  broke  up  the 
ground  for  sowing. 

The  modern  woman  when  in  a  hurry  to  kin 
dle  a  fire  takes  a  can  of  coal-oil,  with  the  con 
sequences  of  which  we  so  often  hear.  But  in 
New  Hampshire  she  often  took  her  husband's 
powder-horn.  One  whose  name  has  become 
historic  thought  one  day  that  she  could  quickly 
stop  the  stream  of  powder  with  her  thumb,  as  she 
had  often  done  before.  But  the  flame  followed 
up  the  stream  into  the  horn,  which  flew  from 
her  hand  up  the  chimney  ;  and  for  years  after 
people  would  say  "as  quick  as  Mother  Hoit's 
powder-horn." 

The  elderly  people  went  to  church,  as  in  Mas 
sachusetts,  on  horseback,  and  the  young  walked. 
In  summer  the  young  men  walked  barefooted, 
with  their  shoes  in  their  hands,  and  the  girls 
walked  in  coarse  shoes,  carrying  a  better  pair  to 
change  before  entering  the  meeting-house.  At 
Concord  it  is  said  those  coming  from  the  west- 
328 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

ward  stopped  at  a  large  pine-tree,  where  the 
shoes  were  put  on,  and  the  women  left  their 
heavy  shoes  under  the  tree  until  they  returned, 
having  no  fear  that  any  one  would  disturb  them 
on  the  Sabbath. 

In  the  "  History  of  Barnstead"  some  curious 
court  records  are  found.  In  1649  Josiah  Pais- 
towe,  for  stealing  four  baskets  of  corn  from  the 
Indians,  is  ordered  to  be  fined  five  pounds  and 
hereafter  to  be  called  Josias  and  not  Mr.  as 
formerly.  Captain  Stone,  for  abusing  Mr.  Lud- 
low,  who  seems  to  have  been  a  justice  of  the 
peace,  and  calling  him  Just-ass  is  fined  one  hun 
dred  pounds. 

We  find  the  men  as  carefully  protected  as  in 
Connecticut  from  those  allurements  which  we 
all  know  are  hard  to  resist.  Margery  Ruggs,  for 
enticing  and  alluring  George  Palmer,  is  ordered 
to  be  severely  whipped,  while  George,  who 
confessed  that  he  had  been  unable  to  resist  the 
enticement,  was  only  set  in  the  pillory. 

The  town  histories  have  many  accounts  of 
fights  with  bears,  which  were  very  numerous 
and  were  often  killed  with  axes.  One  man 
found  a  bear  plunging  his  nose  into  a  wasp's 
nest  to  rob  it,  and  squealing  and  grunting  as  he 
was  stung.  Watching  a  chance  when  he  was 
fully  occupied,  the  hunter  finished  him  with  a 
blow  of  the  axe. 

329 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

There  were  suspicions  of  witchcraft,  and 
charmed  crows  which  could  be  shot  only  with 
a  silver  button.  One  old  dame  who  had  all  the 
usual  signs  and  symptoms  wore  away  to  a  mere 
skeleton  before  her  death.  But  the  shoulders  of 
the  strong  men  who  carried  her  to  the  grave 
were  bruised  black  and  blue,  crushed  by  the 
weight  of  sin. 

Being  the  most  exposed  to  the  French  and 
Indians  of  all  of  the  New  England  colonies,  the 
province  could  make  no  progress  until  repeated 
wars  had  reduced  the  power  of  the  Indians  and 
their  white  allies.  Block-houses  and  garrisons 
were  maintained  all  along  the  frontier,  and 
scouting-parties  were  kept  moving  through  the 
woods  every  day. 

The  Indians  crept  up  to  the  settlements  like 
wild  animals  and  lay  hid  in  the  bushes,  and  even 
in  the  grain-fields  and  potato-patches.  There 
was  no  safety  unless  these  resorts  were  beaten 
up  from  week  to  week,  for  if  the  red  men  were 
allowed  to  colledl  in  that  way  for  any  length  of 
time  they  could  rise  up  on  a  signal  and  massacre 
the  whole  community.  A  settler's  family  might 
go  about  their  ordinary  duties  for  several  days 
and  then  suddenly  discover  by  depressions  in 
the  grass  or  dusky  forms  disappearing  among 
the  trees  that  for  all  that  time  they  had  been 
watched  by  their  enemies. 
330 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

The  Indians  used  light  charges  of  powder, 
waited  till  their  viftims  were  scattered,  and 
then  went  up  close  and  shot  from  behind  a  tree. 
Such  surroundings  turned  every  able-bodied  man 
into  a  Leatherstocking.  The  rangers  of  New 
Hampshire,  many  of  whom  were  Scotch-Irish 
men,  became  famous,  and  their  services  were 
eagerly  sought  in  the  French  wars.  For  follow 
ing  a  trail  and  righting  from  log  to  log  they  were 
unequalled  in  the  colonies. 

In  the  famous  fight  at  Lovewell's  Pond  in 
1725  the  rangers  saw  an  Indian  standing  on  a 
point  on  the  shore  of  a  lake.  They  left  their 
packs  on  the  ground,  crept  to  him,  and  soon 
had  his  scalp  ;  but  while  they  were  gone  after 
this  decoy  the  Indians  hid  themselves  near  the 
packs,  and  when  the  rangers  returned  they  re 
ceived  a  volley  which  killed  nine  of  them. 

The  fight  continued  from  behind  trees.  John 
Chamberlain  fought  the  chief  Paugus,  and  when 
their  guns  became  too  foul  to  use  they  mutually 
agreed  to  go  together  to  the  stream  to  wash 
them.  The  others  on  both  sides,  understanding 
the  arrangement,  watched  them  without  inter 
ference.  When  they  returned  to  their  places 
the  Indian  could  load  faster  than  Chamberlain, 
whose  bullets  could  with  difficulty  be  rammed 
down  the  barrel. 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

"  Now  me  kill  you,"  said  the  chief,  finding 
he  was  first  to  get  his  gun  primed. 

Chamberlain's  gun  wa-s  very  open  at  the  touch- 
hole.  Giving  it  a  smart  blow  on  the  stock,  it 
primed  itself,  and  his  ball  passed  through  Pau- 
gus. 

The  Indians  grew  weary  of  the  contest  and 
retired  with  the  scalps  they  had  secured.  The 
remnant  of  the  rangers  escaped,  but  had  to  leave 
their  wounded  on  the  field,  Lieutenant  Robbins 
begging  to  keep  his  gun  for  a  last  shot  before  he 
died. 

Hunting  was  a  very  profitable  occupation  when 
the  Indians  could  be  avoided.  In  an  expedition 
to  Baker's  River  in  1752  Stark  and  three  com 
panions  collected  within  two  months  furs  to  the 
value  of  five  hundred  and  sixty  pounds  sterling. 
But  they  never  pocketed  the  profits  of  their  suc 
cess,  for  the  Indians  captured  them  and  took 
them  with  their  property  to  Canada,  where  the 
two  who  remained  alive  had  to  be  ransomed. 

Stark  was  a  Scotch-Irishman,  pugnacious,  rest 
less,  and  independent.  He  passed  from  the  pro 
fession  of  hunter  to  that  of  guide,  and  from 
that  to  be  a  soldier  and  an  officer  in  the  French 
and  Indian  wars.  He  served  under  Lord  Howe 
and  other  distinguished  generals,  and  at  the  out 
break  of  the  Revolution  had  had  a  military  ex 
perience  fully  equal  to  that  of  Washington, 
332 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

Putnam,  or  any  other  American  in  the  Continen 
tal  army. 

When  he  heard  the  news  of  Lexington  he 
started  at  once  for  Boston,  and  after  the  manner 
of  a  ranger  called- on  all  the  people  as  he  passed 
to  follow  him.  He  was  at  Bunker  Hill  and 
the  siege  of  Boston.  But  his  only  distinguished 
service  was  the  battle  of  Bennington,  in  which 
he  cut  off  Burgoyne's  foraging-party  and  so 
seriously  checked  his  advance  that  Gates  had 
ample  opportunity  to  collect  the  army  which 
defeated  him  at  Saratoga. 

General  Sullivan,  a  conspicuous  soldier  of  the 
Revolution,  was  born  in  Maine,  but  has  usually 
been  credited  to  New  Hampshire,  where  he 
lived  from  his  early  youth ;  and  Ethan  Allen 
was  the  leading  character  of  that  part  of  New 
Hampshire  which  became  Vermont. 

The  grant  of  land  given  by  Charles  II.  to  the 
Duke  of  York,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  gave  so 
much  trouble  to  Connecticut,  included  the  whole 
of  New  England  west  of  the  Connecticut  River. 
The  colony  of  New  York  was  thus  brought 
eastward  to  that  river,  which  runs  north  and 
south  through  the  middle  of  New  England. 

The  original  charters  of  both  Connecticut  and 

Massachusetts  gave   them  jurisdiction  westward 

all  the  way  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  they  resisted 

the  claims  of  New  York,  until  finally  as  a  com- 

333 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

promise  Connecticut  had  her  western  boundary 
settled  where  it  now  is,  twenty  miles  east  of  the 
Hudson  River ;  and  using  this  as  a  precedent, 
Massachusetts  succeeded  in  having  her  boundary 
settled  in  the  same  way.  But  the  western 
boundary  of  New  Hampshire  was  not  brought 
into  dispute  until  some  years  later,  and  its  settle 
ment  was  more  difficult. 

The  New  Hampshire  lands  which  lay  be 
tween  the  Connecticut  River  and  Lake  Cham- 
plain  were,  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  French 
war  in  1755,  a  complete  wilderness,  into  which 
only  the  hunter  and  the  Indian  cared  to  venture. 
A  few  years  previous  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war 
Governor  Wentworth,  of  New  Hampshire,  had 
issued  patents  for  lands  in  this  section  without 
regard  to  the  grant  to  the  duke  or  the  claims 
of  New  York  ;  and  he  announced  that  the  west 
ern  limit  of  his  colony  was,  like  that  of  Con 
necticut  and  Massachusetts,  a  line  twenty  miles 
east  of  the  Hudson  River. 

The  war,  however,  put  an  end  to  all  attempts 
at  settlement,  for  these  New  Hampshire  Grants, 
as  they  were  called,  became  the  marauding 
ground  of  the  French  and  their  red  allies.  But 
no  sooner  was  the  war  over  and  Canada  given 
to  the  control  of  the  English  than  settlers  began 
to  pour  into  the  Grants,  and  within  four  years 
Governor  Wentworth  found  that  he  had  organ- 
334 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

ized  in  them  one  hundred  and  thirty-eight  town 
ships. 

The  settlers  took  title  to  their  farms  from  New 
Hampshire.  The  majority  of  them  were  from 
Connecticut,  and  the  rest  from  Massachusetts 
and  New  Hampshire.  They  were  hardy  and 
ambitious,  the  flower  of  the  colonial  yeomanry, 
men  whose  love  of  independence  and  daring 
enterprise  had  been  stimulated  by  their  cam 
paigns  against  the  French.  They  cleared  away 
the  forests,  planted,  improved,  and  prospered  ; 
they  believed  that  their  labor  and  success  gave 
them  a  perfect  title  to  their  land,  superior  to 
parchment  or  patent  from  either  Wentworth  or 
the  governor  of  New  York. 

The  New  York  colony,  however,  had  ob 
tained  in  1764  a  decree  from  the  king  in  council 
confining  the  jurisdiction  of  New  Hampshire  to 
the  eastern  side  of  the  Connecticut  River.  At 
first  all  parties  appeared  to  be  satisfied.  The 
settlers  themselves  were  indifferent.  They 
thought  that  they  were  as  likely  to  be  pros 
perous  under  the  government  of  New  York  as 
under  that  of  New  Hampshire.  The  decree 
seemed  to  them  a  purely  political  matter,  with 
out  effeft  on  the  growth  of  crops  or  their  indi 
vidual  rights  of  ownership ;  and  the  change  of 
political  authority  should  certainly  have  left  all 
private  rights  of  property  unimpaired. 
335 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

But  the  government  of  New  York,  urged  on 
by  a  clique  of  land  speculators,  announced  that 
all  titles  in  the  grants  west  of  the  Connecticut 
River  were  invalidated,  and  must  be  repurchased 
from  the  new  authority.  The  settlers,  confident 
in  the  justice  of  their  position,  would  not  respond 
to  this  demand,  refused  to  repurchase  their 
lands,  and  when  the  three  months  had  expired 
New  York  issued  warrants  to  the  land  specula 
tors. 

These  warrants  included  lands  with  orchards 
and  houses  which  had  been  in  the  possession  of 
the  occupants  for  years,  and  had  been  redeemed 
from  the  wilderness  and  brought  to  a  high  state 
of  cultivation.  A  more  complete  and  deliberate 
piece  of  robbery  can  hardly  be  conceived. 

The  settlers  sent  an  agent  to  England,  who 
very  quickly  obtained  an  order  from  the  king 
forbidding  New  York  to  issue  any  more  patents. 
But  nothing  was  said  about  the  patents  already 
granted,  and  under  these  the  speculators  began  to 
take  out  writs  of  ejectment.  The  settlers  were 
determined  to  exhaust  all  peaceable  methods, 
and  under  the  leadership  of  Ethan  Allen  they 
employed  counsel  to  argue  the  ejectment  suits  at 
Albany.  But  almost  every  member  of  the  New 
York  government,  including  some  of  the  judges, 
was  interested  in  the  land-jobbing,  and  the  trial 
was  a  farce. 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

Allen  was  advised  to  yield  to  the  decision, 
and  was  reminded  by  the  New  York  attorney- 
general  that  might  often  prevailed  against  right. 
To  which  in  his  grandiloquent  way  he  replied, 
"The  gods  of  the  valleys  are  not  the  gods  of 
the  hills."  He  retired  to  his  Green  Mountains, 
and  his  followers  allowed  all  the  ejectment  suits 
to  go  against  them  by  default. 

But  it  was  no  easy  matter  for  New  York  to 
execute  the  judgments  obtained  against  the 
people  in  the  Grants  and  force  them  out  of  their 
homes.  Allen  organized  a  systematic  resistance, 
and  the  New  York  officers  succeeded  in  ejecting 
farmers  in  only  one  or  two  instances.  Even  in 
these  cases  the  viftims  were  immediately  restored 
to  their  property  by  Allen's  men.  The  New 
York  sheriffs  were  often  roughly  handled,  and  a 
favorite  mode  of  punishment  was  called  "  chas 
tisement  with  the  twigs  of  the  wilderness,"  a 
phrase  which  sounds  like  Allen. 

For  ten  years,  from  1765  until  the  outbreak 
of  the  Revolution,  this  quarrel  continued.  The 
governor  of  New  York  issued  proclamations 
declaring  Allen  and  his  lieutenants  outlaws  and 
offering  a  bounty  for  their  capture.  Allen  re 
plied  by  issuing  a  proclamation  offering  a  bounty 
for  the  capture  of  the  New  York  attorney- 
general.  At  one  time  New  York  passed  a  law 
by  which  if  Allen  and  some  others  should  not 
VOL.  I.— 22  337 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

within  a  certain  time  surrender  themselves  they 
should  be  deemed  convifted,  and  should  suffer 
death  as  if  indifted  for  a  criminal  offence,  and 
the  Supreme  Court  was  authorized  to  award 
execution  as  if  they  had  been  tried,  found 
guilty,  and  sentenced.  But  the  Green  Mountain 
boys  held  their  farms,  and  when  the  Revolution 
brought  a  lull  in  the  quarrel  not  a  single  land- 
jobber  had  been  successful. 

Allen  took  part  in  the  Revolution,  and  made 
himself  famous  at  the  outset  by  taking  Fort 
Ticonderoga.  At  the  head  of  eighty-three  men 
he  marched  into  the  fort  in  the  dead  of  night, 
and  when  the  astonished  captain  asked  him  by 
what  authority  he  demanded  a  surrender  he  ex 
claimed,  "  In  the  name  of  the  Great  Jehovah 
and  the  Continental  Congress." 

This  was  Allen's  only  exploit  in  the  war. 
He  joined  Montgomery  on  his  expedition  into 
Canada,  and  was  taken  prisoner  in  the  attack 
on  Montreal.  He  remained  in  confinement  two 
years,  and  the  narrative  of  his  experiences  re 
veals  a  condition  of  suffering  among  the  Ameri 
can  prisoners  almost  equal  to  Libby  and  Ander- 
sonville  in  the  civil  war. 

When  he  was  exchanged  and  returned  to  the 

New  Hampshire  Grants  he  found  that  his  friends 

had  taken  advantage  of  the  Revolution  to  declare 

themselves  an  independent  State  under  the  name 

338 


The  White  Mountains  and  the  Green 

of  Vermont,  had  adopted  a  constitution,  and 
elected  the  necessary  officers  of  government. 
He  immediately  retired  from  the  Revolution 
and  devoted  himself  to  securing  the  existence 
of  his  new-born  commonwealth. 

He  kept  up  a  secret  correspondence  with  the 
British  for  the  rest  of  the  war,  which  led  them 
to  suppose  that  Vermont  might  come  over  to 
them  at  any  moment.  At  the  same  time  he 
occasionally  disclosed  this  correspondence  to 
Congress,  and  by  showing  how  easily  they  might 
lose  Vermont  compelled  them  to  respeft  her 
independence. 

The  backwoods  diplomat  continued  his  policy 
for  many  years  after  the  Revolution  was  over. 
Vermont  took  no  part  in  the  formation  of  the 
national  Constitution,  but  kept  threatening  to 
join  Canada  unless  she  were  set  free  from  her 
old  enemy,  New  York,  and  Congress  finally 
recognized  her  as  a  State  in  1791. 


La.njdon  K«v««  •  Portr^movtK .  N  -  H  • 


CHAPTER  VI 

QUAKER     PROSPERITY 

PENNSYLVANIA,  of  which  Delaware  was 

a  part,  was  before  the  arrival  of  Penn  and 
the  Quakers  under  the  nominal  control  of  the 
Dutch  at  New  York.  But  they  regarded  the 
Delaware  River  merely  as  an  avenue  of  trade, 
and  made  no  attempt  to  settle  the  country  round 
it.  The  few  Dutchmen  who  were  on  the  river 
confined  themselves  to  the  one  or  two  forts 
which  they  had  established,  and  were  engaged 
almost  exclusively  in  the  fur  trade  and  in  the 
whale  fishery  at  the  mouth  of  the  bay. 

The  Swedes  entered  the  river  in  1638,  and 
being  quite  numerous  may  be  said  to  have  held 
possession  for  seventeen  years,  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  Dutch.  In  1655  Stuyvesant  conquered 
them  in  a  battle,  which  Irving  in  his  "  Knicker- 
340 


Quaker  Prosperity 

bocker's  History  of  New  York"  has  described 
in  the  mock-heroic  manner.  But  this  conquest 
was  of  very  little  importance,  for  the  Swedes, 
being  the  more  numerous  and  also  better  col 
onists,  cultivated  and  held  the  open  meadow 
lands  and  marshes,  and  the  Dutch  control  was 
nominal. 

The  Swedes  were  very  contented  and  pros 
perous.  Their  way  of  living  and  their  con 
tests  with  the  Dutch  for  the  fur-trade  have  been 
described  in  "  The  Making  of  Pennsylvania," 
which  also  gives  a  full  account  of  the  Quakers, 
Germans,  Welsh,  and  Scotch-Irish,  with  their 
peculiar  customs  and  religious  beliefs.  In  an 
other  volume,  "  Pennsylvania:  Colony  and  Com 
monwealth,"  the  general  history  of  the  province 
is  given. 

Pennsylvania  was  made  up  of  so  many  na 
tionalities  and  religions  and  there  was  so  much 
contest  in  it  that  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  sum 
marize  its  history  in  a  single  chapter,  which  is 
usually  amply  sufficient  for  the  other  colonies. 
Not  only  were  the  elements  of  the  population 
numerous  and  diverse,  but  a  large  part  of  the 
French  and  Indian  wars  was  fought  out  within 
its  borders.  It  was  more  severely  and  danger 
ously  invaded  in  those  wars  than  any  of  the 
other  colonies;  its  position  in  the  Revolution 
was  peculiar  and  has  been  much  misunderstood  ; 
34i 


Quaker  Prosperity 

and  this,  added  to  the  conflict  of  parties,  has 
made  its  history  very  confused  and  elaborate. 
It  will  be  possible  here  only  to  refer  in  a  gen 
eral  way  to  some  of  its  characteristics  as  con 
trasted  with  the  other  provinces,  and  to  touch 
upon  a  few  points  not  included  in  the  two 
volumes  which  have  been  mentioned. 

The  central  figure  of  Pennsylvania  was  Wil 
liam  Penn,  who  in  1681  received  a  grant  of  the 
province  from  the  crown,  and  the  next  year  led 
to  it  the  Quakers,  who  soon  absorbed  the  Swedes. 
Like  Lord  Baltimore  in  Maryland,  he  was  pro 
prietor  of  all  the  land  and  the  people  were  his 
tenants,  paying  him  a  small  quit-rent  for  every 
acre  they  held  of  him.  Like  Lord  Baltimore, 
he  established  religious  liberty,  but  as  a  principle 
in  which  he  believed,  not  as  a  policy  to  which 
he  was  driven  ;  and  religious  liberty  always  pre 
vailed  in  Pennsylvania  without  any  of  the  over 
throws  or  disturbances  which  it  suffered  in 
Maryland. 

The  two  men  and  their  people  who  owned 
the  only  successful  proprietary  colonies  repre 
sented  the  extremes  of  religious  thought  at  that 
time.  The  Quakers  were  the  last  important 
se6l  produced  by  the  Reformation,  and  carried 
the  doftrines  and  principles  of  that  movement 
to  their  utmost  verge.  The  Roman  Church  re 
presented  the  belief  in  the  innumerable  dogmas, 
342 


Quaker  Prosperity 

sacraments,  and  traditions  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  the  Quakers  were  as  far  removed  as  it  was 
possible  for  Christians  to  be  from  that  system. 

The  Roman  Church  had  seven  sacraments;  the 
Quakers  had  none,  not  even  baptism  •  and  of  the 
numerous  dogmas  and  doftrines  they  retained 
only  the  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures  and  the 
divinity  of  Christ.  The  doftrine  of  the  Trinity 
they  explained  in  a  simple  way  of  their  own, 
which  was  not  accepted  at  that  time  even  by  the 
other  Protestant  churches. 

The  other  Protestants  who  came  to  America 
— the  Church  of  England  people,  the  Puritans, 
Independents,  Presbyterians,  and  others — usually 
had  two  sacraments,  and  clung  more  or  less 
tenaciously  to  some  of  the  old  dogmas.  The 
Puritans  of  Massachusetts,  as  we  have  seen,  were 
very  conservative  and  retained  even  the  belief  in 
the  lawfulness  of  persecution  for  religious  error, 
so  that  Pennsylvania  under  the  rule  of  the 
Quakers  was  the  most  advanced  of  all  the  colo 
nies. 

Having  cleared  their  minds  of  all  the  ancient 
dogmas,  the  Quakers  naturally  adopted  religious 
liberty  as  a  principle,  just  as  we  find  the  Anti- 
nomian  followers  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  Roger 
Williams,  who  settled  Rhode  Island,  adopting 
that  principle.  But  the  Quakers,  being  later  in 
time,  more  numerous,  better  regulated  and  or- 
343 


Quaker  Prosperity 

ganized,  and  going  to  a  more  fertile  country 
than  Rhode  Island,  built  up  a  more  prosperous 
colony. 

There  were  in  Germany  a  number  of  se6ls, 
Mennonites,  Tunkers,  Schwenkfelders,  and  oth 
ers,  who  held  very  much  the  same  views  as  the 
Quakers.  They  were  part  of  a  great  movement 
of  thought,  sometimes  called  Quietism,  which 
towards  the  close  of  the  Reformation  had  spread 
all  over  Europe,  producing  the  Quakers  in  Eng 
land,  a  whole  host  of  sects  like  them  in  Ger-  N 
many,  and  even  afFecling  to  some  extent  the  / 
people  of  Italy  and  France.  William  Penn  had 
travelled  and  preached  among  the  Quaker  sefts 
in  Germany,  and  he  and  his  followers  invited 
them  to  come  to  Pennsylvania. 

They  came  in  great  numbers,  and  were  fol 
lowed  soon  after  by  German  Lutherans  and 
members  of  the  German  Reformed  Church. 
Penn  and  the  Quakers  had  not  intended  to  bring 
the  Lutherans  and  the  Reformed.  But  the 
immigration  movement  once  started  could  not 
be  checked,  and  soon  the  German  peasantry 
without  regard  to  religion  began  to  swarm  into 
Pennsylvania.  This  migration  continued  for 
almost  a  hundred  years,  or  from  the  foundation 
of  the  colony  until  the  Revolution,  and  the  re 
sult  was  that  in  colonial  times  one-third  of  the 
population  of  the  province  was  German,  or 
344- 


Quaker  Prosperity 

Pennsylvania  Dutch,  as  they  were  called,  and 
this  proportion  is  still  maintained. 

Pennsylvania  and  New  York  were  thus  the 
only  colonies  that  had  in  them  any  considerable 
alien  population.  The  people  of  the  other 
provinces  were  all  of  English  stock,  with  here 
and  there  a  few  foreigners,  like  the  French 
Huguenots,  but  not  enough  to  make  any  serious 
difference.  Virginia  and  New  England  were 
exceptionally  pure  Anglo-Saxon,  and  remained 
so  until  some  time  after  the  Revolution. 

In  New  York  the  alien  element  had  been 
first  in  the  field,  controlled  the  government, 
and  their  influence  was  strongly  felt  after  the 
English  conquest.  But  in  Pennsylvania  the 
English  Quakers  held  the  government  and  were 
the  controlling  element  until  the  Revolution. 
The  Germans  nearly  all  went  out  on  the  frontier 
and  left  Philadelphia  in  complete  control  of  the 
Quakers. 

Pennsylvania  became  a  great  colony,  composed 
of  a  number  of  smaller  colonies.  The  Quakers 
and  the  Church  of  England  people  had  exclusive 
possession  of  Philadelphia  and  the  neighboring 
counties,  and  lived  and  ruled  in  their  own  way. 
The  Germans  held  Lancaster,  Berks,  Mont 
gomery,  and  Lehigh  Counties,  retaining  the  lan 
guage  and  customs  of  their  native  country  and 
living  to  themselves.  They  developed  a  dialecl: 
.345 


Quaker  Prosperity 

of  debased  German  and  English,  which  is  still 
spoken  in  the  districts  they  first  occupied,  and 
to  this  day  they  retain  a  large  part  of  their  origi 
nal  German  characteristics. 

In  the  Cumberland  Valley,  near  the  Susque- 
hanna  and  close  to  the  Maryland  line,  the  Scotch- 
Irish  formed  another  almost  separate  colony. 
These  settlers  could  not  be  called  in  any  sense 
aliens.  They  were  people  of  English  stock, 
most  of  whom  had  lived  in  the  Scotch  Lowlands 
and  migrated  thence  to  Ireland,  where  they 
took  up  the  confiscated  lands  of  the  native  Irish 
rebels.  They  began  coming  to  America  in 
large  numbers  soon  after  the  year  1700,  when 
the  long  leases  on  which  they  held  the  Irish 
lands  began  to  expire,  and  they  spread  them 
selves  on  the  frontiers  from  Maine  to  Georgia; 
but  most  of  them  entered  Pennsylvania  and  Vir 
ginia,  where  they  were  attracted  by  the  fertile 
land. 

Although  they  were  not  foreigners  like  the 
Germans,  their  life  in  Ireland,  where  they  had 
been  in  continual  conflict  with  the  native  Irish, 
had  developed  in  them  distinct  characteristics. 
They  were  a  hardy,  excitable,  aggressive  people, 
and  established  customs  and  ways  of  their  own 
on  the  Pennsylvania  frontier  without  regard  to 
the  Quakers  in  Philadelphia  or  any  of  the  other 
inhabitants  of  the  province. 
346 


Quaker  Prosperity 

The  Welsh  Quakers,  who  came  out  in  consid 
erable  numbers,  had  at  first  a  colony  of  their 
own  just  west  of  Philadelphia  on  the  Welsh 
Barony,  as  the  tracl:  of  land  was  called  which 
had  been  given  them  by  Penn.  They  spoke 
Welsh  to  the  exclusion  of  English,  and  attempted 
to  have  a  peculiar  form  of  government  in  which 
county  and  township  affairs  were  managed 
through  the  Quaker  meetings ;  but  their  sepa 
rate  existence  and  separate  language  did  not  last 
long,  and  before  fifty  years  had  passed  they 
were  completely  absorbed. 

The  northern  half  of  the  province  was  claimed 
by  Connecticut  under  her  charter,  which,  like 
that  of  Massachusetts,  gave  her  the  land  west 
ward  to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  This  claim  was 
stoutly  resisted  by  William  Penn's  heirs ;  but 
they  never  could  raise  a  sufficient  force  to  resist 
the  Connecticut  people,  who  entered  and  settled 
the  Wyoming  Valley,  forming  another  distinct 
community,  which  for  many  years  maintained  a 
petty  civil  war  against  the  proprietary  govern 
ment  at  Philadelphia.  The  struggle  for  the 
Wyoming  Valley  is  the  most  romantic  episode 
in  the  history  of  the  province,  and  its  details, 
together  with  the  curious  customs  of  the  Scotch- 
Irish,  Germans,  and  Welsh,  have  been  given  in 
"  The  Making  of  Pennsylvania." 

It  will  be  seen  at  once  from  this  brief  review 
347 


Quaker  Prosperity 

/  that  Pennsylvania  was  totally  unlike  her  sister 
provinces.  The  two  most  important,  Virginia 
and  Massachusetts,  were  each  composed  of  a 
homogeneous  united  people,  of  one  religion,  ex 
tremely  conservative,  driving  out  heretics  and 
dissenters,  and  resenting  all  alien  influences. 
Connecticut  was  very  much  like  Massachusetts  ; 
and  Maryland,  New  Jersey,  Georgia,  and  the 
Carolinas,  although  they  had  some  slight  inter 
mixture,  were  not  so  decidedly  mixed  in  popu 
lation  as  Pennsylvania. 

New  York  had  a  large  alien  population  of 
Dutch  and  some  mixture  of  nationalities  in 
New  York  City,  and  approached  more  nearly 
to  the  condition  of  Pennsylvania ;  while  Rhode 
Island,  though  composed  of  various  religions, 
was  peopled  almost  exclusively  by  Englishmen. 
But  neither  in  New  York,  Rhode  Island,  nor 
any  of  the  other  provinces  were  the  people  split 
up  into  distinct  divisions,  living  by  themselves 
in  almost  separate  colonies,  as  in  Pennsylvania. 

Two  conspicuous  results  followed  from  the 
conditions  in  Pennsylvania,  one  from  the  nature 
of  the  religion  professed  by  most  of  the  people 
and  the  other  from  their  divided,  disunited  state. 
The  religion  of  the  Quakers  and  of  a  large  part 
of  the  Germans,  having  rejected  nearly  all  the 
ancient  dogmas,  allowed  great  liberty  of  thought. 
Penn  and  the  Quakers  enacted  most  liberal  laws. 
3.48 


Quaker  Prosperity 

Hospitals  and  charitable  institutions  naturally 
followed,  and  soon  scientific  research  appeared. 

Franklin,  finding  the  conservative  atmosphere 
of  Boston  uncongenial,  fled  to  Pennsylvania, 
where  he  soon  became  one  of  the  leading  men 
of  science  of  the  age,  and  discovered  that  light 
ning  and  the  aurora  borealis  were  forms  of  elec 
tricity.  Medical  science  was  rapidly  developed. 
The  first  medical  school,  the  first  hospital,  and 
the  first  dispensary  ever  known  in  America  were 
established  in  Philadelphia,  which  in  colonial 
times  and  long  afterwards  was  the  centre  of 
study  for  botany,  astronomy,  natural  history,  and 
all  the  sciences  that  were  pursued  in  that  age. 

The  general  opinion  had  usually  fixed  upon 
Virginia  and  the  Carolinas  as  the  most  fertile 
portions  of  America  and  the  land  from  which 
wealth  could  be  most  easily  gained.  In  a  cer 
tain  sense  this  was  true,  but  not  in  the  way 
that  was  expected.  It  was  supposed  that  those 
countries  would  produce  a  great  variety  of 
produces,  wheat,  cattle,  hemp,  flax,  as  well  as 
wine,  silk,  and  drugs.  But  all  these  were  fail 
ures  in  the  Carolinas,  and  rice  and  indigo,  from 
which  nothing  had  been  expefted,  became  the 
important  crops ;  and  in  Virginia  tobacco  ab 
sorbed  all  the  efforts  and  devotion  of  the  people. 

Pennsylvania  was  the  only  province  where 
there  could  be  a  really  varied  production  under 
349 


Quaker  Prosperity 

the  conditions  then  prevailing.  This,  however, 
was  not  discovered  until  all  the  other  colonies 
had  been  founded  except  Georgia.  Although 
beginning  less  than  a  hundred  years  before  the 
Revolution  and  half  a  century  after  Virginia, 
New  England,  New  York,  and  Maryland  had 
been  established,  Pennsylvania  at  the  time  of 
the  Revolution  stood  third  in  population  and 
importance,  coming  immediately  after  Virginia 
and  Massachusetts. 

Philadelphia  increased  still  more  rapidly.  For 
more  than  a  hundred  years  from  the  beginning 
of  the  colonial  period  Boston  was  the  largest 
city  in  the  colonies;  but  about  1750  Phila 
delphia  was  even  with  her  in  the  race,  and  soon 
far  surpassed  her,  remaining  the  metropolis  of 
the  country  until  excelled  by  New  York  in  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

This  remarkable  progress,  which  was  prima 
rily  caused  by  the  capacity  of  the  province  to 
engage  in  a  varied  agriculture  combined  with 
lumber,  commerce,  and  manufacturing,  was  un 
doubtedly  stimulated  by  the  liberal  laws,  and 
still  more  by  a  circumstance  which  has  not  been 
often  noticed. 

The  other  colonies,  especially  the  prominent 
ones,  were  held  back  during  the  early  periods 
of  their  existence  by  the  hostility  of  the  Indians. 
The  Virginians  for  more  than  fifty  years  lived 


Quaker  Prosperity 

under  arms  in  palisadoed  plantation  houses.  In 
Carolina  the  people  for  a  long  time  dared  not 
have  a  plantation  far  from  the  walls  of  Charles 
ton,  and  during  the  seventeenth  century  the 
red  man  kept  the  New  Englanders  very  closely 
confined  to  their  trade  and  fishing  on  the 
coast. 

But  William  Penn's  famous  treaty  with  the 
Indians,  and  the  fidelity  with  which  it  was 
always  observed,  secured  for  Pennsylvania  a 
long  peace  of  seventy  years,  which  was  not 
broken  until  the  French  and  Indian  wars,  which 
began  in  1755.*  Instead,  therefore,  of  the 
massacres,  contests,  and  continual  watchfulness 
which  fill  the  early  history  of  Virginia  and  New 
England,  the  Pennsylvanians  were  from  the 
beginning  perfectly  free  to  develop  the  interior 
resources  of  their  province  as  they  pleased. 
The  Indians  never  caused  them  a  moment's  un 
easiness  ;  there  were  no  forts  or  armies,  and 
when  the  French  and  Indian  invasions  began  in 
1755  it  was  found  that  many  of  the  farmers  in 
the  interior  had  no  weapons  and  none  of  them 
knew  anything  of  Indian  warfare. 

The  rapid  material  prosperity  which  Pennsyl 
vania  enjoyed  was  deprived  of  its  full  fruition 

*  See  "Pennsylvania:  Colony  and  Commonwealth," 
chap.  vii.  p.  98. 

351 


Quaker  Prosperity 

by  the  divided  condition  of  the  people,  the 
effefts  of  which  are  still  felt.  The  western 
part  of  the  province,  peopled  largely  by  Scotch- 
Irish,  felt  itself  to  be  a  separate  community; 
and  at  the  time  of  the  Whiskey  Rebellion  in 
1791  there  were  serious  thoughts  of  attempt 
ing  to  make  it  a  separate  State.  Its  people, 
with  Pittsburg  for  their  capital,  still  speak  of 
themselves  as  Western  Pennsylvanians.  The 
Scotch-Irish  always  detested  the  Quakers  and 
their  government  at  Philadelphia,  and  this  feel 
ing  survives  in  a  hostility  always  shown  by  the 
country  districts  towards  the  city,  which  often 
surprises  strangers  who  are  unfamiliar  with  the 
history  of  the  State.  Instead  of  being  regarded 
as  the  metropolis  of  which  they  can  be  proud, 
Philadelphia  is  looked  upon  as  a  rival  to  be  dis 
liked  and  injured. 

The  descendants  of  the  Connecticut  invaders 
in  the  Wyoming  Valley  in  the  northeastern  part 
of  the  State  have  similar  feelings,  and  also  at  one 
time  entertained  the  idea  of  a  separate  State ; 
and  the  Germans  are  still  in  many  respefts  a 
separate  community. 

This  lack  of  unity  and  homogeneousness 
deprived  Pennsylvania  of  that  high  distinction 
and  ascendency  which  were  enjoyed  by  Vir 
ginia  and  Massachusetts.  The  province  pro 
duced  no  political  leaders  of  such  vital  force 
352 


Quaker  Prosperity 

as  the  great  Virginians  and  no  literary  men  like 
those  of  Massachusetts. 

John  Dickinson  was  a  Pennsylvanian  in  the 
sense  that  he  was  born  and  brought  up  in  Dela 
ware,  which  in  colonial  times  was  part  of  the 
province,  and  came  to  Philadelphia  when  a 
young  man  to  pradtise  law.  He  had  a  vast  in 
fluence  in  shaping  the  early  course  of  the  Revo 
lution.  His  *'  Letters  of  a  Farmer"  first  aroused 
the  people  of  the  whole  continent  to  an  intel 
ligent  resistance  against  the  stamp  acts  and  tea 
acts  ;  and  they  were  the  strongest  statement  of 
the  legal  relations  between  the  colonies  and  the 
mother-country  that  was  made. 

From  that  time  until  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence  he  draughted  every  important  national 
document  and  was  recognized  as  one  of  the  most 
important  leaders  of  the  movement.  But  he  re 
fused  to  vote  for  the  Declaration  of  Indepen 
dence  because  he  thought  it  premature.  He 
wished  to  postpone  it  until  our  arms  had  met 
with  some  success  which  would  induce  an  alli 
ance  with  France. 

This  lost  him  his  popularity  and  power. 
Pennsylvania  turned  against  him  with  that  un 
fortunate  disunited  habit  she  has  always  had  of 
attacking  her  own  important  men.  He  was  in 
effeft  banished  ;  went  to  live  in  Delaware,  be 
came  a  common  soldier  in  the  Continental  army, 

VOL.  I.-23  353 


Quaker  Prosperity 

and  did  not  appear  again  in  national  public  life 
until  he  was  sent  by  Delaware  to  the  convention 
of  1787  which  framed  the  Constitution. 

Of  the  other  prominent  men,  Robert  Morris 
was  born  in  England,  Franklin  in  Boston,  James 
Wilson  in  Scotland,  and  in  later  times  Albert 
Gallatin  in  Switzerland.  The  prosperity  of  the 
State,  and  especially  the  advancement  and  liberal 
ity  of  Philadelphia,  attracted  able  men  from  other 
places  ;  but  the  mixed,  confused  population 
could  not  produce  remarkable  characters  of  its 
own,  like  the  pure  and  united  stocks  of  Virginia 
and  Massachusetts. 

For  the  same  reason  Pennsylvania,  like  New 
York,  was  slow  in  entering  the  Revolution  ;  but 
once  in,  her  people  were  earnest  and  persevering 
in  the  contest.  But  the  extreme  aggressiveness 
which  conceived  the  idea  of  independence  and 
forced  it  through  originated  in  Massachusetts 
and  Virginia,  where  the  race  was  purest  and 
most  united. 

William  Penn,  whose  enthusiasm  created  the 
province  of  Pennsylvania  and  brought  together 
in  it  the  most  incongruous  elements  of  popula 
tion  that  were  to  be  found  in  any  of  the  British 
colonies,  was  a  very  remarkable  man.  His 
character  was  almost  as  mixed  and  various  as 
the  population  of  his  colony. 

He  was  born  in  1644,  the  son  of  Admiral 
354 


Quaker  Prosperity 

Perm,  who  conquered  Jamaica  before  he  was 
thirty,  and  passed  a  life  of  distinguished  service 
on  the  seas.  After  Blake  he  was  the  greatest 
naval  officer  of  the  century  in  England.  Between 
his  twenty-third  and  thirty-first  years  he  passed 
through  the  ranks  of  Rear-Admiral  of  Ireland, 
Vice-Admiral  of  Ireland,  Admiral  of  the  Straits, 
and  Vice-Admiral  of  England.  He  had  accu 
mulated  before  the  close  of  his  life  a  valuable 
estate,  represented  for  a  time  the  town  of 
Weymouth  in  Parliament,  and  held  several  of 
those  offices  of  honor  and  profit  which  in  that 
age  were  so  liberally  bestowed  on  the  favorites 
of  the  crown. 

He  was  determined  to  rise  in  his  profession, 
no  matter  what  political  party  was  in  power. 
He  served  with  equal  zeal  under  Cromwell  and 
under  Charles  II.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  revo 
lution  he  rightly  judged  that  the  popular  party 
would  have  the  best  of  it,  and  he  joined  them. 
But  in  1655  Cromwell  sent  him  in  command  of 
a  fleet  to  capture  Hispaniola  and  Jamaica.  By 
that  time  he  had  made  up  his  mind  that  Crom 
well's  cause  was  failing,  and  so  soon  as  he  got 
his  fleet  together  he  secretly  offered  it  to  Charles, 
then  in  exile  on  the  Continent.  Charles  thanked 
him,  said  he  had  no  place  to  keep  a  fleet,  but 
that  he  would  remember  the  offer. 

Penn  went  on  with  his  expedition  for  Crom- 
355 


Quaker  Prosperity 

well,  and  conquered  Jamaica;  but  from  that  time 
he  took  part  in  the  plots  for  the  restoration  of 
Charles,  and  was  largely  instrumental  in  their 
final  success.  Neither  Charles  nor  his  brother 
James  II.  ever  forgot  these  services,  and  their 
gratitude  played  an  important  part  in  the  career 
of  the  admiral  and  also  in  the  career  of  his  son. 
Indeed,  without  this  gratitude  the  son  could 
hardly  have  secured  such  an  enormous  domain  in 
America  as  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware,  or  held 
it  against  so  much  opposition. 

If  the  admiral  had  any  sincere  political  opin 
ions  at  all,  they  were  royalist,  and  arose  from 
his  extravagant  respeft  for  the  aristocracy  and 
his  love  of  the  excitements  of  a  courtier's  career. 
When  ashore  he  spent  a  large  part  of  his  time 
at  court,  and  his  position  there  and  in  the  navy 
gave  him,  as  he  thought,  an  unusual  advantage 
for  advancing  his  son.  He  educated  him  with 
that  intent,  and  tried  to  press  him  on  towards 
preferment. 

We  have  a  portrait  of  young  Penn  when  he 
was  about  twenty-two,  which  has  often  been  re 
produced  in  engravings,  and  shows  a  face  of  most 
uncommon  beauty  and  attractiveness.  But  there 
is  about  it  a  gentle,  serious  cast  and  a  far-away 
look  in  the  large  eyes  rather  inconsistent  with  the 
father's  schemes.  What  was  the  horror  of  that 
father  when  he  discovered  that  while  at  Oxford 
356 


Quaker  Prosperity 

his  son  had  turned  religious,  and  wanted  to  preach 
and  groan  in  spirit,  and  despised  the  glorious  art 
of  war  ! 

Young  Penn  had  been  at  Christ  Church  Col 
lege,  where  he  had  shown  considerable  taste 
and  ability  for  athletic  sports,  but  he  had  also 
attended  the  preaching  of  the  Quakers  and 
caught  the  infedlion.  He  had  not  then  be 
come  a  Quaker,  but  there  was  enough  of  it  in 
him  to  alarm  the  admiral,  and  thenceforth  the 
struggle  between  father  and  son  reads  like  a 
comedy.  The  boy  was  whipped,  and  several 
times  disowned  and  dismissed  from  the  parental 
roof  without  a  penny  except  what  his  mother 
gave  him  secretly,  and  as  a  last  resort  he  was 
sent  with  some  of  the  gay  people  of  that  age  to 
travel  in  France,  in  the  hope  that  he  would  pick 
up  something  besides  fanaticism. 

The  scheme  was  partly  successful,  for,  al 
though  Penn  retained  his  religion,  he  added  to  it 
some  of  the  qualities  his  father  wished.  Pepys 
describes  him,  on  his  return  from  France,  as  a 
"  most  modish  person  grown  quite  a  fine  gentle 
man,"  affefting  French  speech,  gait,  and  clothes. 
He  had  become  what  we  would  now  call  a 
Franco-maniac. 

He  had  succeeded  in  combining  in  himself  the 
characters  of  religious  enthusiast  and  courtier, 
and  was  perfectly  sincere  in  both.  He  fought 
357 


Quaker  Prosperity 

with  a  man  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  disarmed  him, 
and  then  gave  him  his  life.  Soon  after  his  re 
turn  to  England,  when  Pepys  noted  the  remark 
able  change  in  his  manners,  he  was  again  seized 
with  the  religious  feeling  and  his  father  became 
alarmed.  The  remedy  that  had  been  successful 
once  was  tried  again,  and  the  young  man  was 
sent  to  Ireland,  where  the  Lord-Lieutenant  at 
that  time  kept  a  court  of  no  little  splendor  and 
gayety.  For  the  third  time  Penn's  feelings 
underwent  a  change.  His  melancholy  disap 
peared,  he  began  to  take  an  interest  in  military 
affairs,  and  made  himself  so  useful  in  quelling 
a  mutiny  among  the  troops  that  the  lord-lieu 
tenant  wanted  to  make  him  a  captain,  and  Penn 
came  very  near  accepting. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  he  had  his  portrait 
painted,  and  it  is  rather  curious  that  the  only 
picture  taken  from  life  that  we  have  of  the  great 
Quaker  is  one  in  which  he  is  clad  in  armor  and 
wears  the  long  hair  of  a  cavalier. 

But  the  old  feeling  soon  got  the  better  of  him. 
He  went  to  hear  a  Quaker  preach,  and  this  time 
the  doftrine  struck  home  and  he  never  vacillated 
again.  He  formally  joined  the  seel:  and  was 
once  more  disowned  by  his  father. 

It  would  require  a  volume  to  tell  the  suffer 
ings  and  struggles  he  endured  in  the  early  part 
of  his  religious  career.  The  Church  of  Eng- 
358 


Quaker  Prosperity 

land  was  determined  to  suppress  Quakerism. 
Penn  was  often  under  arrest  and  often  in  prison, 
and  he  became  almost  as  familiar  with  the  in 
terior  of  English  jails  as  George  Fox  or  Bunyan. 

He  was  from  that  time  a  recognized  leader 
and  preacher  and  the  author  of  numerous  theo 
logical  works.  At  the  same  time  he  passed  a 
large  part  of  his  days  at  court,  would  dress 
handsomely  on  occasions,  could  be  gay  and 
witty,  and  took  part  in  politics  and  other  things 
somewhat  inconsistent  with  what  is  supposed  to 
be  Quaker  doctrine.  So  much  was  this  side  of 
his  character  developed  that  in  spite  of  his  great 
abilities  his  seel:  was  at  times  a  little  inclined  to 
dispense  with  his  services. 

All  his  life  long  he  showed  this  double  nature, 
and  it  was  at  the  same  time  both  his  weakness 
and  his  strength.  His  father  had  been  double 
in  politics,  belonging  first  to  the  roundheads 
and  then  to  the  royalists  as  suited  his  plans  for 
advancement.  The  son  belonged  both  to  the 
world  and  to  religion  ;  not  to  one  after  the  other, 
but  to  both  at  the  same  time,  and  seems  to  have 
been  perfectly  sincere  in  both. 

This  ability  to  combine  the  religious  man 
with  the  man  of  the  world — to  be,  in  other 
words,  that  apparently  impossible  combination 
of  qualities,  a  Quaker  courtier — was  the  key 
note  of  Penn's  life  and  the  cause  of  much  ad- 
359 


Quaker  Prosperity 

vantage  to  his  se£t.  By  his  presence,  skill,  and 
influence  at  court  he  was  able  to  extend  the 
principles  of  religious  liberty  and  protect  the 
Quakers  as  well  as  others  who  suffered  from 
persecution.  He  released  hundreds  of  his  people 
from  prison.  He  prevented  thousands  more 
from  being  imprisoned  and  suffering  other  in 
dignities.  He  enlarged  the  liberty  and  strength 
ened  the  position  of  the  Quakers  in  every  way. 
Nor  did  he  confine  his  exertions  to  his  own 
sect,  but  spread  the  wing  of  his  protection  over 
other  dissenters,  and  obtained  pardons  for  politi 
cal  offenders  of  every  sort. 

He  devoted  himself  to  the  whole  cause  of 
civil  and  religious  liberty.  He  wrote  pamphlets 
on  it.  He  could  scarcely  write  a  letter  without 
mentioning  it.  He  even  went  so  far  as  to  main 
tain  that  it  was  an  advantage  to  have  a  multi 
tude  of  sects ;  that  those  nations  were  most 
prosperous  that  allowed  the  greatest  liberty  in 
religious  opinions,  and  he  gave  Holland  as  a  re 
markable  instance.  Though  probably  in  his 
heart  believing  that  defensive  warfare  was  ex 
cusable,  he  advocated  the  settling  of  all  inter 
national  difficulties  by  arbitration.  He  believed 
in  peace  congresses  which  would  create  an  un 
armed  United  States  of  Europe ;  and  in  this  he 
was  far  in  advance  of  his  time. 

These  principles,  it  is  true,  were  also  part  of 
360 


Quaker  Prosperity 

the  doftrine  of  his  seft  ;  but  he  was  the  only 
man  of  his  seel:  who  could  advocate  them  in  the 
midst  of  their  enemies  at  court.  That  he  could 
advance  such  opinions,  and  at  the  same  time  re 
tain  not  only  his  influence,  but  the  respecl,  con 
fidence,  and  even  affecYion  of  royalists  and 
bigots,  is  a  striking  proof  of  his  courage  and 
force  of  character. 

He  was  continually  writing  books  and  pam 
phlets  on  the  questions  of  his  day.  His  pub 
lished  works  fill  two  large  volumes,  and  range 
through  all  the  political  and  religious  subjects  of 
that  time.  Many  of  them  were  written  in 
prison,  and  the  three  which  have  been  longest  re 
membered — "  The  Sandy  Foundation  Shaken," 
tf  Innocency  with  Her  Open  Face,"  and  "  No 
Cross,  No  Crown" — were  written  when  he  was 
only  twenty-four  years  old. 

"  The  Sandy  Foundation"  was  an  attack  on 
the  doftrine  of  the  Trinity  as  formulated  in  the 
subtle  metaphysics  of  the  schoolmen.  When 
he  was  imprisoned  for  it  because  he  was  under 
stood  to  deny  the  divinity  of  Christ,  he  wrote 
"Innocency  with  Her  Open  Face,"  in  which 
he  explained  the  Quaker  position  of  denying 
the  metaphysical  subtleties  of  the  doftrine  of 
the  Trinity  without  denying  the  divinity  of  the 
Saviour. 

"  No  Cross,  No  Crown,"  which  was  written 


Quaker  Prosperity 

in  prison  about  the  same  time,  may  be  called 
his  one  stroke  of  genius.  A  deeply  religious 
book,  appealing  to  the  religious  sentiment  of 
humanity  without  regard  to  creed,  it  seems  to 
have  expressed  all  that  was  best  in  the  newly 
awakened  feelings  of  the  young  cavalier.  It 
has  been  translated  into  several  languages,  and 
new  editions  of  it  are  still  published. 

As  governor  and  proprietor  of  Pennsylvania 
he  was  very  liberal  and  just,  and  the  laws  of 
the  province  expressed  quite  fully  the  advanced 
ideas  which  had  brought  into  existence  the 
Quakers.  Penn  wished  to  establish  a  community 
where  government  could  exist  without  military 
force,  justice  be  administered  without  oaths,  and 
religion  sustained  without  salaried  ministers.  An 
expression  he  used  in  one  of  his  frames  of 
government  was  so  happy  that  it  is  still  often 
quoted.  He  said  that  any  government  was  free 
where  the  laws  ruled  and  the  people  were 
parties  to  the  laws. 

He  not  only  permitted  religious  liberty,  but 
made  it  a  penal  offence  to  deride  or  annoy  any 
one  for  a  difference  in  religion.  His  punish 
ments  for  crime  were  unusually  mild.  Death 
was  inflicted  only  for  murder  and  treason.  This 
was  remarkable  when  we  consider  that  in  Eng 
land  there  were  over  two  hundred  offences  for 
which  death  was  the  punishment,  in  the  colony 
362 


Quaker  Prosperity 

of  New  York  the  same  number,  and  in  Massa 
chusetts  and  South  Carolina  over  twenty.  Every 
county,  he  said,  must  contain  a  prison,  and  every 
one  of  these  prisons  must  be  a  workhouse  and 
reformatory.  He  provided  that  punishments 
should  be  graded  according  to  the  enormity  of 
the  offence,  which  was  a  great  advance  ;  for  it 
was  the  opinion  of  that  time  that  what  deserved 
to  be  punished  at  all  deserved  to  be  punished 
severely.  There  was  a  feeling  that  every  crime, 
even  the  smallest,  could  be  extirpated  by 
thoroughness,  and  the  most  thorough  methods 
that  could  be  discovered  were  torture  and  death. 

These  ideas  of  prison  discipline  and  graded 
punishments,  now  so  wide-spread  but  then 
altogether  new,  were  suggested  and  advocated 
by  the  Quakers  at  a  time  when  Beccaria  and 
Montesquieu,  usually  considered  the  great  ex 
ponents  of  them,  had  not  been  born. 

Penn  also  dispensed  with  the  old  laws  by 
which  the  estates  of  murderers  and  suicides  were 
taken  from  their  families  and  given  to  the  state, 
and  he  abolished  primogeniture.  But  it  is 
rather  curious  that  it  did  not  occur  to  him  to 
abolish  imprisonment  for  debt.  Neither  did  he 
attempt  to  abolish  slavery  ;  he  apparently 
thought  it  a  permissible  evil.  But  he  made 
efforts  to  improve  the  condition  of  the  negroes 
and  attempted  to  have  a  bill  passed  in  the 
363 


Quaker  Prosperity 

provincial  council  to  introduce  marriage  among 
them  instead  of  the  promiscuous  intercourse 
which  was  supposed  to  be  more  profitable  to 
their  owners.  He  expressed  excellent  ideas  on 
the  subject  of  public  education,  but  they  were 
never  carried  out.  Yet  he  accomplished  so 
much  that  we  should  hunt  the  world  over  in 
vain  to  find  another  instance  of  one  man  putting 
into  aclual  practice  such  a  high  ideal  of  a  com 
monwealth. 

He  arranged  Pennsylvania  to  suit  himself, 
mapped  it  out  into  manors,  counties,  and  cities, 
gave  names,  and  directed  the  lines  of  future 
growth.  No  other  colony  was  so  completely 
the  work  of  one  man.  He  gave  instructions 
that  all  highways  should  be  straight  lines  from 
point  to  point,  and  Philadelphia  was  accordingly 
laid  out  on  the  checker-board  plan  with  narrow 
streets  all  at  right  angles  to  each  other.  This 
unfortunate  arrangement  has  caused  great  incon 
venience  in  modern  times  and  thwarted  many 
attempts  to  improve  the  appearance  of  the  city. 

He  received  altogether  a  large  amount  of 
money  from  his  colony ;  but  during  his  life 
time  there  was  no  net  profit  to  him.  He  mort 
gaged  or  sold  all  his  estates  in  England  and 
Ireland,  and  even  mortgaged  Pennsylvania  itself 
in  order  to  start  the  colony  and  carry  it  through 
its  critical  years  of  infancy.  Inspired  and  en- 
364 


Quaker  Prosperity 

thusiastic  with  the  vastness  of  his  undertaking, 
he  spared  nothing,  and  reduced  himself  to  such 
straits  that  he  was  at  one  time  imprisoned  for 
debt,  and  died  in  comparative  poverty.  But  his 
heirs  reaped  a  rich  harvest  and  were  more  shrewd 
in  money  matters  than  their  ancestor. 

Not  so  reckless  and  exuberant  as  in  Virginia, 
nor  so  repressed  and  restrained  as  in  New  Eng 
land,  the  life  of  the  Philadelphia  people  was  full 
of  enjoyment  and  substantial  comfort.  The 
houses  were  well  built,  usually  of  brick,  with 
broad  porches,  projecting  roofs,  often  with  sun 
dials  set  in  the  walls,  and  many  of  them  were 
surrounded  with  gardens.  The  streets  were 
planted  with  trees,  following  the  original  in 
tention  of  Penn,  who  wished  to  have  a  "  green 
country  town"  like  those  with  which  he  was 
familiar  in  England.  Posts  a  few  feet  apart 
marked  the  sidewalks,  and  there  were  pumps 
with  lamps  on  them  every  thirty  or  forty  yards. 

Outside  of  the  town  a  pretty,  undulating 
country  spread  away  to  the  north  and  west, 
covered  with  farms  and  innumerable  country- 
seats.  Every  family  of  any  means  had  a  town- 
house  and  a  country-house  for  summer.  There 
was  no  part  of  the  colonies  where  this  country- 
seat  life  flourished  as  it  did  near  Philadelphia. 

Some  of  these  country-houses  are  still  stand 
ing, — the  Woodlands,  Mount  Pleasant,  Stenton, 
365 


Quaker  Prosperity 

Cliveden  ;  but  twenty-seven  of  them  were  de 
stroyed  by  the  British  army  when  they  occupied 
Philadelphia,  and  the  rest  have  disappeared  under 
the  changes  of  modern  times.  They  were 
usually  built  of  stone  or  brick,  in  the  best  forms 
of  the  colonial  architecture  taken  from  the  types 
of  Sir  Christopher  Wren's  school,  which  was 
flourishing  at  that  time  in  England.  They  had 
ample  grounds  round  them,  often  a  hundred 
acres  or  more,  which  were  cultivated  as  a  farm. 
But  close  to  the  house  the  landscape  gardening 
and  the  arrangement  of  the  trees,  shrubbery, 
and  walks  were  in  the  best  English  style,  and  far 
excelled  anything  of  the  sort  in  other  colonies. 

These  establishments  had  none  of  the  varied 
life  and  rough  plenty  of  the  Virginia  and  Mary 
land  plantation-houses  or  of  the  New  York 
manors,  and  were  generally  occupied  only  in 
summer,  like  modern  country-seats  ;  but  there 
was  much  entertaining  in  them,  more  elegant 
and  formal  than  in  the  Southern  houses,  and 
some  of  them,  like  the  Woodlands  and  Stenton, 
had  fine  libraries,  works  of  art,  and  collections. 
Everything  about  them  implied  considerable 
wealth  and  leisure  in  their  owners,  and  they 
were  a  step  nearer  modern  life  than  the  other 
colonial  mansions. 

There  was  less  of  a  distinct  aristocratic  class 
than  in  the  South,  and  less  even  than  in  New 


Quaker  Prosperity 

England.  What  was  called  the  aristocracy  was 
more  like  the  upper  classes  of  modern  times, 
composed  of  the  respectable,  successful,  or  rich. 
To  these  the  rest  of  the  people  paid  a  sort  of 
deference,  more  from  the  habit  which  had  be 
come  fixed  in  all  European  minds  than  from 
any  power  the  upper  classes  possessed. 

Philadelphia  had  many  other  characteristics 
which  showed  that  the  freedom  of  thought 
which  prevailed  in  the  province  had  advanced 
it  into  ways  more  like  those  to  which  the  whole 
country  is  now  accustomed.  The  first  fire 
companies  were  started  there,  the  first  circu 
lating  library,  the  first  company  for  insurance 
against  fire,  the  first  legal  periodical,  and  the 
first  bank.  There  were  many  good  private 
libraries,  and  some  important  publishing  houses, 
which  issued  editions  of  Blackstone's  "  Com 
mentaries,"  Robertson's  "  Charles  V.,"  and  Fer 
guson's  "  Essays,"  larger  enterprises  of  the  kind 
than  were  undertaken  in  the  other  colonial 
cities.  A  general  postal  service  was  also  at 
tempted,  which  was  extended  by  Franklin  to 
cover  all  the  colonies,  and  the  Philadelphians 
often  showed  a  touch  of  the  modern  impatience 
for  early  news. 

Probably  in  no  other  place  on  the  continent 
was  the  love  of  bright  colors  and  extravagance 
in  dress  carried  to  such  an  extreme.  Large  num- 
367 


\ 


Quaker  Prosperity 

bers  of  the  Quakers  yielded  to  it,  and  even  the 
very  stricl  ones  carried  gold-headed  canes,  gold 
snuff-boxes,  and  wore  great  silver  buttons  on 
their  drab  coats  and  handsome  buckles  on  their 
shoes.  Nowhere  were  the  woman  so  resplen 
dent  in  silks,  satins,  velvets,  and  brocades,  and 
they  piled  up  their  hair  mountains  high.  It 
often  required  hours  for  the  public  dresser  to 
arrange  one  of  these  head-dresses,  built  up  with 
all  manner  of  stiffening  substances  and  worked 
into  extraordinary  shapes.  When  he  was  in  great 
demand  just  before  a  ball,  the  ladies  whom  he 
first  served  were  obliged  to  sit  up  all  the  previ 
ous  night  and  move  carefully  all  day,  lest  the 
towering  mass  should  be  disturbed. 

The  markets  of  Philadelphia  were  excellent 
from  the  beginning,  as  they  still  are.  There 
was  an  immense  supply  of  provisions  of  all 
kinds  in  great  variety  and  of  the  best  quality, — 
meats,  poultry,  vegetables,  fruits,  and  the  foreign 
delicacies  which  the  aftive  commerce  of  the  city 
with  all  parts  of  the  world  supplied.  Feasting 
and  gormandizing  to  the  verge  of  gluttony  were 
the  order  of  every  day.  There  were  private 
dinner-parties  and  entertainments  without  end, 
and  all  manner  of  clubs  which  were  merely  ex 
cuses  for  epicureanism. 

The  descriptions  of  the  banquets  and  feasts, 
with  twenty,  thirty,  and  even  a  hundred  differ- 


Quaker  Prosperity 

ent  dishes,  washed  down  by  floods  of  Madeira, 
ale,  and  punch,  are  appalling,  and  at  first  incline 
one  to  the  belief  that  the  physical  character  of 
the  people  must  have  totally  changed.  But  the 
same  sort  of  thing  was  going  on  in  England  at 
that  time,  and  in  a  less  degree  in  other  large 
American  towns.  The  people  led  an  out-door 
life,  and  were  not  in  the  nervous,  depleted  con 
dition  produced  by  the  strain  of  modern  life. 

Gout  was  very  common,  and  Dickinson,  who 
drove  his  coach-and-four  and  made  money  rap 
idly,  seems  to  have  had  severe  attacks  of  it  when 
comparatively  a  young  man.  John  Adams,  when 
he  came  to  Philadelphia  to  the  Continental  Con 
gress  in  1774,  fresh  from  Boston,  stood  aghast 
at  this  life  into  which  he  was  suddenly  thrown, 
and  thought  it  must  be  sin.  But  he  rose  to  the 
occasion,  and,  after  describing  in  his  diary  some 
of  the  "mighty  feasts"  and  "sinful  feasts" 
which  he  attended,  says  that  he  drank  Madeira  "  at 
a  great  rate"  and  found  no  "  inconvenience." 

Chastellux,  our  good  friend  who  has  given  us 
so  many  glimpses  of  colonial  life,  complained 
that  the  breakfasts  were  very  heavy.  Loins  of 
veal,  legs  of  mutton,  and  other  substantial  dishes 
at  an  early  hour  in  the  morning  were  rather 
staggering  to  a  Frenchman  who  was  accustomed 
to  a  cup  of  coffee  and  a  roll.  One  of  these 
breakfasts,  he  says,  lasted  an  hour  and  a  half. 
VOL.  I. -24  369 


Quaker  Prosperity 

The  drinking  habits  were  also  trying  to  him. 
They  had,  he  said,  the  barbarous  British  prac 
tice  of  drinking  each  others'  healths  at  a  din 
ner  party,  calling  out  names  from  one  end  of 
the  table  to  the  other,  so  that  it  was  difficult  to 
eat  or  converse  while  you  had  to  inquire  the 
names  or  catch  the  eyes  of  five  and  twenty  or 
thirty  persons,  being  incessantly  called  to  on  the 
right  and  left,  or  pulled  by  the  sleeve  by  chari 
table  neighbors,  who  were  so  kind  as  to  acquaint 
you  with  the  politeness  you  were  receiving. 

Some  would  call  out  four  or  five  names  at 
once.  "  The  bottle  is  then  passed  to  you,  and 
you  must  look  your  enemy  in  the  face,  for  I  can 
give  no  other  name  to  the  man  who  exercises 
such  an  empire  over  my  will :  you  wait  till  he 
likewise  has  poured  out  his  wine  and  taken  his 
glass  ;  you  then  drink  mournfully  with  him,  as  a 
recruit  imitates  the  corporal  in  his  exercise." 

At  a  ball  at  the  French  minister's,  which  he 
describes,  he  says  it  was  the  custom  for  a  lady  to 
dance  with  her  partner  the  whole  evening, — a 
severe  rule,  as  he  thought,  which,  however,  oc 
casionally  admitted  of  exceptions.  The  hand 
somest  women  were  given  to  the  strangers.  The 
Comte  de  Darnes  had  Mrs.  Bingham  for  his 
partner,  and  the  Vicomte  de  Noailles  Miss 
Shippen  ;  and,  to  the  honor  of  France,  they  out 
danced  Mr.  Pendleton,  who  was  a  chief-justice, 


Quaker  Prosperity 

and  two  members  of  Congress,  one  of  whom, 
Mr.  Duane,  was  supposed  to  be  "  more  lively 
than  all  the  other  dancers." 

There  was  a  supper  at  midnight,  and  on  pass 
ing  into  the  room  the  French  minister  gave  his 
hand  to  Mrs.  Morris,  a  precedence  which  Chas- 
tellux  says  was  usually  accorded  her  as  the  rich 
est  woman  of  the  town.  The  ball  continued 
till  two  in  the  morning,  but  the  marquis  did  not 
stay  to  the  end.  He  had  been  examining  the 
battle-fields  round  Philadelphia  the  day  before, 
and  had  learnt,  he  says,  "  to  make  a  timely 
retreat." 

The  French  minister  was  certainly  a  valuable 
addition  to  society  in  Philadelphia,  and  on  July 
15,  1782,  to  celebrate  the  birthday  of  the  dau 
phin  of  France,  he  gave  a  grand  f£te,  of  which 
we  have  an  excellent  description  by  Dr.  Rush. 
A  wooden  dancing-room  sixty  feet  long  and 
forty  feet  deep  was  erected  in  the  minister's 
grounds,  open  all  round  for  the  sake  of  coolness, 
the  ceiling  decorated  with  emblematic  paint 
ings,  the  garden  cut  into  beautiful  walks  and 
divided  by  cedar  and  pine  branches  into  arti 
ficial  groves,  seats  placed  everywhere,  and  thirty 
cooks  obtained  from  the  French  army. 

For  ten  days  beforehand  nothing  was  talked 
of  but  this  ball.  The  shops  were  crowded  ; 
hair-dressers,  tailors,  milliners,  and  mantua- 


Quaker  Prosperity 

makers  were  to  be  seen,  covered  with  sweat  and 
out  of  breath,  in  every  street.  So  great  was  the 
demand  for  the  gentlemen  of  the  comb  that 
some  ladies  were  obliged  to  have  their  hair 
dressed  between  four  and  six  in  the  morning. 

Half-past  seven  in  the  evening  was  the  hour 
fixed  for  the  entertainment,  and  as  the  time 
approached  carriages  thronged  the  streets,  every 
window  was  filled  with  spectators,  and  nearly 
ten  thousand  of  them  gathered  round  the  minis 
ter's  house.  Filled  with  French  ideas  of  liberty 
and  equality,  and  enthusiastic  over  the  happy 
close  of  the  American  Revolution,  the  minister 
was  not  unmindful  of  this  crowd.  He  had 
arranged  the  fence  so  that  they  could  all  look 
through  it,  and  he  would  have  distributed  among 
them  two  pipes  of  Madeira  and  six  hundred 
dollars  in  small  change  if  some  of  the  prominent 
people,  fearing  a  riot,  had  not  dissuaded  him  ; 
so  the  money  was  given  to  the  prisoners  in  the 
jail  and  the  patients  in  the  hospital. 

As  he  entered  the  pavilion  with  his  family, 
Dr.  Rush  found  seven  hundred  people  in  the 
most  brilliant  and  varied  dresses,  all  ranks,  par 
ties,  professions,  and  officers  of  government ;  the 
most  learned  mingled  with  those  "  who  knew 
not  whether  Cicero  pleaded  in  Greek  or  Latin, 
or  whether  Horace  was  a  Roman  or  a  Scotch 
man."  Merchants  and  gentlemen,  tradesmen 
372 


Quaker  Prosperity 

and  lawyers,  Whigs  and  those  who  formerly 
had  been  Tories,  governors,  generals,  congress 
men,  judges,  ministers  of  finance  with  their  suites 
and  secretaries,  made  up  the  incongruous  mix 
ture,  which  nevertheless  was  in  perfect  har 
mony,  because,  as  the  doftor  assures  us,  it  was 
truly  republican,  and  pride  and  ill  nature  were 
forgotten. 

He  saw  Washington  and  Dickinson  conversing 
with  each  other,  and  Dickinson  and  Morris 
frequently  reclined  against  the  same  pillar. 
The  war  was  the  great  subject  of  reminiscence 
and  discussion,  and  men  who  had  taken  part  in 
every  stage  of  it  were  there.  Rutledge  and 
Walton  from  the  South  hobnobbed  with  Lincoln 
and  Duane  from  the  North,  and  Tom  Paine 
wandered  about  analyzing  his  thoughts  and  en 
joying  the  repast  of  his  own  ideas.  Mifflin 
and  Reed  accosted  each  other  as  if  they  had 
always  been  friends.  An  Indian  chief  in  his 
savage  dress  and  war-paint  stood  beside  Count 
Rochambeau  in  his  splendid  uniform,  and  talked 
with  him  as  if  they  had  been  the  subjecls  of  the 
same  government. 

The  heat  was  so  intense  on  that  July  night 
that  few  were  willing  to  dance  ;  but  there  were 
fireworks,  refreshments  of  cake,  fruits,  and 
drinks  continually  served,  and  at  midnight  a 
grand  supper  under  three  large  tents.  The 
373 


Quaker  Prosperity 

minister,  the  Chevalier  de  la  Luzerne,  passed 
about,  addressing  himself  to  every  lady  ;  and  so 
careful  was  he  of  every  one's  pleasure  that  he 
had  provided  a  private  room,  where  through  a 
gauze  curtain  the  stria  Quaker  ladies  could  see 
without  indulging  in  the  entertainment. 

It  seems  to  have  been  a  principle  with  the 
chevalier  that  true  republicanism  included  tem 
perance  and  extreme  decorum  and  good  breed 
ing.  So  far  was  this  carried  that  Dr.  Rush 
mentions  it  as  marring  the  occasion,  for  the 
Philadelphians  of  that  day  were  not  accustomed 
to  such  a  lack  of  "  convivial  noise."  They 
complained  that  the  people  behaved  more  as  if 
they  were  worshipping  than  eating.  Every 
body,  it  was  said,  felt  pleasure,  but  it  was  of 
too  tranquil  a  nature.  Several  people  had  pre 
pared  odes  and  songs,  but  there  was  no  encour 
agement  to  produce  them. 

When  the  aftual  righting  of  the  Revolution 
began,  and  prices  rose,  giving  opportunities  for 
speculation  of  all  sorts,  the  extravagance  and 
recklessness  in  Philadelphia  reached  extraordi 
nary  heights.  Afterwards,  when  the  town  became 
the  seat  of  government,  and  Washington  with 
his  officials  and  the  diplomats  were  living  there, 
the  luxury  and  display  impressed  Frenchmen 
like  Rochefoucauld  as  very  remarkable. 

In  colonial  times  the  hour  for  fashionable 
374 


Quaker  Prosperity 

dinner-parties  seems  to  have  varied  from  noon 
until  six  o'clock,  which  is  significant  of  the 
leisure  and  easy  life  the  people  must  have  en 
joyed.  The  famous  dinner  given  by  Chief- 
Justice  Chew,  which  Adams  describes,  was  at 
four.  Chastellux  describes  the  fashionable  hour 
as  at  five ;  and  he  says  that  calls  and  visits  were 
paid  in  the  morning.  But  there  seem  to  have 
been  also  afternoon  visits  with  much  tea-drink 
ing.  In  the  evening  the  suppers  began  among 
the  men ;  and  they  were  heavy  meals,  almost 
banquets,  at  the  taverns  and  clubs,  with  hard 
drinking  and  informal  talk  and  discussion. 

In  previous  years  there  had  been  another 
chance  at  funerals,  which,  as  in  New  England, 
implied  eating  and  drinking,  with  the  distribu 
tion  of  scarfs  and  rings.  It  was  the  fashion  for 
enormous  numbers  of  people  to  attend  funerals, 
— in  some  instances,  it  is  said,  several  thousand, 
— and  a  long  procession,  mostly  on  horseback, 
followed  the  body  to  the  grave.  These  extrava 
gances  were  stopped  in  1764  in  all  the  Northern 
colonies  by  what  would  now  be  called  a  reform 
movement. 

A  wedding  was  another  occasion  which  could 
not  be  allowed  to  pass  unimproved,  and  even  the 
Quakers  indulged  in  great  festivity.  The  banns 
were  twice  pronounced,  and  after  each  proc 
lamation  there  was  often  a  reception  ;  and  the 
375 


Quaker  Prosperity 

wedding  entertainment  itself  sometimes  lasted 
two  days,  during  which  the  parents  of  the  bride 
kept  open  house. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  there  was  a  great  deal 
that  was  provincial  and  also  simple  in  the  best 
sense  of  the  word.  In  summer,  in  Philadelphia, 
the  young  ladies  appeared  in  full  dress  in  the 
evenings  and  sat  on  the  front  door-steps,  while 
the  young  men  passed  about,  paying  visits.  A 
similar  custom  prevailed  in  Baltimore  until  long 
after  the  civil  war.  Although  there  were  carpets 
in  some  of  the  houses,  sanded  floors  were  very 
common.  Many  of  the  people  resisted  the  in 
troduction  of  carpets,  because  they  gathered  dust 
and  could  not  be  easily  and  often  cleaned.  A 
bare  floor  scrubbed  every  day  and  sprinkled  with 
fresh  sand  was  best,  they  said,  for  all  respectable 
people. 


CHAPTER   VII 

NOVA    C^ESAREA 

TN  New  Jersey,  which  the  Indians  called 
Scheyichbi,  and  the  Dutch  Achter  Kol,  we 
find  faint  and  faded  impressions  of  the  colonies 
which  were  near  by.  Her  people  were  a  mixture 
of  those  who  had  created  Pennsylvania,  New 
York,  and  New  England.  But  no  one  element 
of  the  population  acquired  exclusive  control,  as 
the  Quakers  did  in  Pennsylvania. 

The  province,  mountainous  in  the  north,  and 
with  a  great  deal  of  land  which  was  evidently 
fertile,  sloped  off  towards  the  east  and  south, 
with  level  sandy  plains  covered  with  a  dense 
growth  and  interspersed  with  cedar  swamps. 
Some  of  this  southern  land  was  valuable,  es 
pecially  for  fruit  and  vegetables,  but  this  use 
of  it  was  not  then  fully  available. 

The  province  had  the  most  obvious  natural 
boundaries  of  any  of  the  colonies.  The  At 
lantic  Ocean  and  the  Hudson  River  on  the  east, 
377 


Nova  Csesarea 

and  the  Delaware  River  and  Bay  on  the  west 
and  south,  left  only  one  artificial  line  to  be 
drawn  for  the  northern  boundary  from  the 
upper  part  of  the  Delaware  to  the  Hudson. 

But  New  Jersey  was  not  believed  to  contain 
any  large  quantity  of  fertile  land,  nor  to  be 
capable  of  furnishing  gold,  timber,  fur,  or  any 
of  the  things  that  were  eagerly  sought  by  the 
worldly,  and  it  so  happened  that  no  seel:  of  re 
ligious  enthusiasts  chose  it  for  a  refuge. 

The  Dutch  at  New  York  took  no  interest  in 
it,  although  it  was  within  what  they  called  New 
Netherland.  They  confined  themselves  to  fol 
lowing  up  the  valley  of  the  Hudson  towards 
the  source  of  the  fur  supply,  which  was  the 
chief  object  of  their  ambition.  A  few  of  them 
occupied  Pavonia,  on  the  present  site  of  Jersey 
City ;  but  they  left  few  descendants  there,  and 
were  not  an  important  element  of  the  population. 

The  Swedes  who  trespassed  on  the  dominions 
of  the  Dutch  on  the  Delaware  usually  preferred 
the  Pennsylvania  side  of  the  river;  but  a  few  of 
them  settled  on  the  marshes  and  meadow  lands 
of  the  Jersey  side  from  Salem  up  almost  oppo 
site  to  Philadelphia,  especially  at  Raccoon  Creek, 
near  the  present  village  of  Bridgeport,  opposite 
to  Chester. 

Nothing  more  in  the  way  of  settlement  was 
accomplished  until  Charles  II.,  in  order  to  have 
378 


Nova  Csesarea 

an  excuse  for  seizing  New  York  from  the  Dutch, 
in  1664  granted  to  his  brother  the  Duke  of 
York  all  the  land  between  the  Connecticut 
River  and  the  Delaware.  The  duke  kept  the 
Hudson  for  himself,  and  gave  to  Lord  Berkeley 
and  Sir  George  Carteret  the  country  between 
the  Delaware  and  the  ocean,  "  hereafter  to  be 
called,"  as  the  grant  said,  "by  the  name  or 
names  of  Nova  Caesarea  or  New  Jersey." 

A  few  years  afterwards,  in  1676,  Berkeley  and 
Carteret  divided  the  province  between  them  by 
a  line  beginning  at  Little  Egg  Harbor,  at  the 
lower  end  of  Barnegat  Bay,  and  crossing  diago 
nally  to  the  northern  waters  of  the  Delaware  a 
few  miles  below  Milford.  This  made  two 
colonies ;  East  Jersey,  on  the  New  York  side  of 
the  line,  belonging  to  Carteret,  and  West  Jersey, 
on  the  Pennsylvania  side,  belonging  to  Berkeley. 
But  before  this  dividing  line  was  finally  decided 
upon,  the  two  proprietors  seem  to  have  agreed 
that  Carteret  should  have  the  part  near  New 
York  and  Berkeley  the  part  on  the  Delaware. 

Carteret  was  soon  successful  in  getting  people 
to  settle  in  the  neighborhood  of  Newark  Bay. 
There  were  already  Dutchmen  there  and  a  few 
Danes,  and  by  these  Danes  the  name  Bergen, 
from  a  town  of  Norway,  is  said  to  have  been 
given  to  the  country  ;  but  why  the  Danes  should 
have  given  a  Norwegian  name  is  not  apparent. 
379 


Nova  Caesarea 

These  Danes,  so  called,  may  have  been  Nor 
wegians.  Denmark  and  Norway  were  united  at 
that  time,  and  Denmark  being  the  more  impor 
tant,  it  may  have  been  the  custom  to  speak  of 
all  the  people  as  Danes.  The  name  still  survives 
in  one  of  the  counties,  the  town  of  Bergen,  and 
Bergen  Point. 

These  Dutch  and  Danes  were  living  in  small 
villages,  from  which  they  went  out  to  cultivate 
their  fields,  and  the  reason  was  the  same  which 
compelled  the  early  New  Englanders  to  this 
sort  of  life, —  namely,  fear  of  the  Indians,  who 
were  very  hostile  in  that  neighborhood. 

Puritans  from  Long  Island  established  them 
selves  at  what  is  now  Elizabeth  just  about  the 
time  of  the  grant  to  Berkeley  and  Carteret,  and 
after  the  grant  many  more  came  in,  some  from 
Long  Island  and  the  rest  from  various  parts  of 
New  England,  establishing  the  New  England 
town  system.  Scotch  were  added  and  also 
immigrants  direcl:  from  England,  until  there  were 
flourishing  little  villages, — Elizabeth,  Newark, 
Middletown,  and  Shrewsbury. 

Carteret  appointed  a  relative,  Philip  Carteret, 
to  be  governor,  who  came  out  and  lived  at  Eliza 
beth,  sending  agents  into  New  England  to  en 
courage  settlers  to  come  to  him.  He  remained 
at  Elizabeth  from  1665  until  his  death  in  1682, 
governing  by  means  of  a  council  and  a  general 
380 


Nova  Caesarea 

assembly  elefted  by  the  people,  and  having  con 
siderable  trouble  with  his  people,  who  were  dis 
united  and  unruly.  Andros,  who  ruled  New 
York,  disputing  his  authority  on  one  occasion, 
sent  armed  men  to  Elizabeth,  who  seized  him 
and  brought  him  a  prisoner  to  Manhattan. 

Lord  Berkeley,  who  had  West  Jersey  for  his 
share,  soon  sold  it  to  John  Fenwick  in  trust  for 
Edward  Byllmge.  Fenwick  came  out  in  1675, 
and  settled  a  few  families  at  what  is  now  Salem, 
on  the  Delaware.  Byllinge,  the  real  owner, 
was  bankrupt,  and  turned  over  West  Jersey  to 
his  creditors,  appointing  William  Penn  and  some 
others  to  hold  it  in  trust  for  them.  This  was 
Penn's  first  experience  in  American  affairs,  and 
a  few  years  afterwards  he  received  the  grant  of 
Pennsylvania.  He  and  his  co-trustees  arranged 
with  Carteret  in  1676  the  dividing  line  which 
has  been  mentioned. 

They  also  sold  a  number  of  shares  in  West 
Jersey,  and  the  purchasers  prepared  to  establish 
settlements.  Most  of  them  were  Quakers,  and 
the  story  is  told  that  as  they  lay  at  anchor  in  the 
Thames  waiting  to  start,  Charles  II.  came  by  in 
his  barge,  stopped  alongside  to  look  at  them, 
and  being  told  that  they  were  Quakers,  gave 
them  his  blessing.  But  whether  he  intended  it 
as  a  courtly  joke  or  whether  they  valued  the 
blessing  of  such  a  man  we  are  not  told. 


Nova  Caesarea 

They  reached  the  Delaware  and  proceeded  up 
it  to  Raccoon  Creek,  on  the  Jersey  side,  about  a 
dozen  miles  below  the  present  site  of  Philadel 
phia,  and  landed  among  the  Swedes,  who  took 
care  of  them  in  their  barns  and  out-houses,  where 
they  were  obliged  to  live  for  a  time  with  snakes 
under  the  floors.  They  purchased  from  the  In 
dians  the  land  from  Old  Man's  Creek,  a  little 
below  Raccoon  Creek,  where  they  landed,  up  to 
Timber  Creek,  near  the  present  Gloucester; 
from  there  to  Rancocas  Creek,  and  thence  to 
Assunpink,  where  Trenton  now  stands.  Their 
final  settlement  was  made  at  a  place  they  first 
called  New  Beverley,  then  Bridlington  ;  after 
wards  they  gave  it  its  present  name,  Burlington. 

They  found  that  fruit  of  all  kinds  would  grow 
in  the  greatest  profusion.  In  Smith's  History 
some  of  the  letters  which  these  early  colonists 
wrote  home  are  preserved,  and  they  describe 
the  peaches  and  apples  breaking  down  the  limbs 
with  their  weight,  wild  berries  and  nuts,  with 
great  abundance  of  game.  They  had  discovered 
the  cranberries  which  are  still  so  plentiful  in  the 
Jersey  swamps,  and  were  already  making  cran 
berry  sauce  for  wild  turkey  and  venison. 

Other  immigrants  arrived,  some  going  to  the 
colony  at  Salem  which  Fenwick  had  established, 
and  some  to   Burlington,  and    these   two   towns 
composed  the  province  of  West  Jersey. 
382 


Nova  Csesarea 

For  many  years  game  and  the  wild  fruits 
seem  to  have  been  the  principal  source  of  food, 
and  in  winter  those  who  had  no  gun  or  had  run 
out  of  ammunition  were  often  in  danger  of 
starving.  The  family  of  John  Hollingshead, 
on  Rancocas  Creek,  being  in  great  distress  in 
the  winter  of  1682,  their  son,  a  lad  of  thirteen, 
killed  two  wild  turkeys  with  a  stick.  Soon  after 
the  dogs  chased  a  buck,  which,  attempting  to 
cross  on  the  ice  of  the  creek,  could  not  keep  its 
footing  with  its  smooth  hoofs.  When  it  fell  on 
its  side,  young  Hollingshead  mounted  its  back, 
and  kept  his  seat  through  its  struggles  until  he 
killed  it  with  his  knife. 

In  1687  the  crops  failed  and  the  people  were 
in  great  want.  Some  lived  entirely  on  fish,  and 
others,  who  were  not  near  the  water,  on  herbs. 
Fortunately,  a  vessel  laden  with  grain  arrived  in 
the  river  from  England.  Finding  a  good  market, 
vessels  afterwards  came  with  similar  cargoes 
every  year,  and  we  hear  no  more  of  famine. 

The  proprietor  of  East  Jersey,  Sir  George 
Carteret,  died  in  1679,  an<^  by  his  will  left  direc 
tions  that  his  province  should  be  sold,  and  Wil 
liam  Penn  and  eleven  others  became  the  pur 
chasers.  They  published  an  account  of  the 
country  and  succeeded  in  increasing  the  number 
of  settlers,  obtaining  many  from  Scotland,,  who 
established  themselves  in  the  neighborhood  of 
333 


Nova  Csesarea 

Perth  Amboy,  named  from  the  Scottish  Earl  of 
Perth  and  an  Indian  word  which  meant  a  point. 

The  new  proprietors  were  Quakers,  and  they 
appointed  Robert  Barclay  to  be  governor  for 
life.  He  was  the  author  of  the  famous  book 
known  as  Barclay's  "  Apology,"  which  has 
usually  been  regarded  as  the  ablest  of  all  the 
statements  of  Quaker  doftrine.  He  remained  in 
England  and  appointed  deputies  to  go  out  and 
govern  the  colony.  He  seems  to  have  ruled  the 
colony  in  this  way  until  his  death,  eight  years 
afterwards. 

East  Jersey  in  the  year  1682  contained  about 
three  thousand  five  hundred  people.  Most  of 
them  were  collected  about  Newark  Bay,  with 
some  scattered  in  the  direction  of  the  Shrews 
bury  River  and  Sandy  Hook.  Bergen,  the  oldest 
town,  was  inhabited  principally  by  Dutch,  who 
had  come  from  New  York  many  years  before, 
and  it  was  strongly  fortified  against  the  Indians. 

The  people  lived  on  fish  and  oysters,  and 
had  small  farms.  The  oysters  they  found 
growing  wild  on  all  the  coast  from  Newark 
round  to  Cape  May.  Fish  were  also  abundant, 
and  in  a  letter  of  the  time  we  read  that  "  Bar- 
negat  or  Burning  Hole  is  said  to  be  a  very  good 
place  for  fishing."  But  they  could  be  taken 
anywhere  with  the  greatest  ease  in  all  the  East 
Jersey  waters,  and  the  people  commonly  fished 
384 


Nova  Csesarea 

'<  with  long  sieves  or  long  nets,  and  will  catch 
with  a  sieve  sometimes  two  barrels  a  day  of  good 
fish."  There  seems  to  have  been  none  of  the 
danger  of  famine  in  winter  time  which  we  read 
of  in  West  Jersey. 

The  East  Jersey  people  seem  to  have  been  a 
little  free  with  their  weapons  about  the  year 
1686,  or  else  their  peace-loving  Quaker  rulers 
were  disposed  to  be  strict  with  them.  People, 
it  is  said,  were  put  in  great  fear  from  quarrels 
and  challenges,  and  a  law  was  passed  forbidding 
any  one,  under  penalty  of  fine  and  imprison 
ment,  to  challenge,  or  wear  pocket-pistols, 
skeins,  stilladers,  daggers,  or  dirks. 

The  numerous  proprietors  of  both  the  Jerseys 
were  a  source  of  great  confusion  in  the  govern 
ment  of  those  provinces.  Each  promoted  his 
own  schemes  and  interests,  and  parties  and 
cliques  among  them  were  constantly  interfering 
with  one  another.  It  was  difficult  for  them  to 
agree  on  a  governor ;  and  when  it  was  attempted 
to  have  both  sets  of  proprietors  agree  on  one 
governor  for  both  provinces,  the  difficulties  were 
increased.  The  remedy  suggested  was  for  the 
proprietors  to  surrender  their  governmental  rights 
to  the  Crown,  and  make  the  two  provinces  into 
one  under  a  royal  governor.  This  was  accom 
plished  in  1702,  just  after  Queen  Anne  had  as 
cended  the  throne. 

VOL.  I.-25  385 


Nova  Csesarea 

Lord  Cornbury  was  immediately  appointed 
the  royal  governor,  with  a  council  to  assist  him 
and  an  assembly  elefted  by  the  people  to  make 
laws.  This  assembly  was  to  meet  alternately 
at  Perth  Amboy  and  at  Burlington. 

The  proprietors  had  surrendered  to  the  Crown 
only  their  right  to  govern,  and  still  retained 
their  ownership  of  the  land,  and  the  people 
always  maintained  that  they  also  were  entitled 
to  the  enjoyment  of  the  rights  and  privileges 
they  had  had  before  the  surrender.  These  two 
questions  of  the  rights  retained  by  the  propri 
etors  and  the  rights  retained  by  the  people  be 
came  the  subject  of  much  contention,  both 
proprietors  and  people  struggling  for  the  pres 
ervation  of  their  privileges  against  the  en 
croachments  of  the  governor. 

Cornbury,  who  was  also  governor  of  New 
York,  was  a  violent,  self-willed,  injudicious 
man.  He  had  the  right  to  adjourn  the  assembly 
whenever  he  pleased,  and  he  made  free  use  of 
it.  In  the  very  beginning  of  his  government  he 
kept  adjourning  the  assembly  till  one  was  elefted 
which  suited  him  and  passed  the  laws  he  wanted. 

But  it  was  seldom  he  could  have  an  assembly 
of  this  sort.  Most  of  them  were  hostile,  and 
protested  against  his  rule,  his  long  absences  in 
New  York,  and  his  negledl  of  the  affairs  of  the 
province.  Convifted  murderers,  it  is  said,  were 
386 


Nova  Csesarea 

allowed  to  go  unpunished  and  wander  about  at 
large.  He  compelled  the  people  from  all  parts 
of  the  province  to  go  to  Burlington  to  probate 
wills  and  transact  all  other  business  of  the  gov 
ernment.  He  granted  monopolies,  established 
arbitrary  fees,  and  prohibited  the  proprietors' 
agents  from  selling  land  in  West  Jersey.  He 
had  also  taken  upon  himself  to  pass  upon  the 
qualifications  of  members  of  the  assembly,  and 
had  refused  to  allow  three  who  had  been  duly 
elefted  to  be  sworn  ;  and  finally  he  was  charged 
with  having  been  bribed  by  interested  persons 
to  dissolve  the  assembly. 

At  the  same  time  that  the  assembly  was  pro 
testing  the  proprietors  appealed  to  the  Lords  of 
Trade  in  England  against  Cornbury's  arbitrary 
administration,  and  Cornbury,  through  his  coun 
cil,  appealed  to  the  queen  against  the  disloyal, 
factious,  and  turbulent  people,  as  he  called  them. 
But  he  was  soon  recalled,  to  the  great  relief  of 
every  one,  after  a  most  unfortunate  administration 
of  six  years. 

Lord  Lovelace,  his  successor,  was  popular, 
and  seemed  to  be  undoing  all  the  evil  of  Corn- 
bury  ;  but  he  died  in  about  a  year.  The  prov 
ince,  however,  enjoyed  quieter  times,  although 
there  was  always  plenty  of  wrangling  and  dis 
putes  with  governors,  and  in  1738  the  people 
obtained  a  governor  of  their  own  instead  of 
387 


Nova  Caesarea 

sharing  with  New  York.  In  1763  William 
Franklin,  an  illegitimate  son  of  Benjamin  Frank 
lin,  became  governor,  and  held  the  office  until 
the  Revolution. 

Jersey  had  no  frontier  near  the  French  and 
hostile  Indians.  She  was  completely  shut  in  by 
Pennsylvania  and  New  York,  and,  like  Rhode 
Island,  she  felt  none  of  the  sharp  experience  of* 
those  long  wars  which  were  such  a  discipline 
and  training  for  the  other  provinces. 

Her  people  who  lived  near  New  York  par 
took  largely  of  the  Dutch  ways.  Their  houses 
had  the  Dutch  stoops  or  porches  with  seats, 
where  the  family  and  their  visitors  sat  on  sum 
mer  evenings  to  smoke  and  gossip,  while  the 
cows  with  their  tinkling  bells  wandered  about 
the  streets.  Long  Dutch  spouts  extended  out 
from  the  eaves  to  discharge  the  rain-water  into 
the  street.  In  some  villages  there  was  a  touch 
of  New  England  life,  and  small  towns  can  still 
be  found  in  some  parts  of  the  State  with  neat 
white  houses  and  broad  shaded  streets  like  their 
prototypes  in  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut. 
In  West  Jersey,  along  the  Delaware,  Quaker 
habits  and  methods  were  conspicuous. 

The  colony  had  no  seats  of  commerce  of  her 
own.  Her  trade  in  wheat  and  provisions  all 
went  out  by  way  of  New  York  and  Philadel 
phia.  Her  long  line  of  sea-coast  with  danger- 
388 


Nova  Csesarea 

ous  inlets  and  bars  offered  no  good  harbors, 
and  the  places  where  there  were  good  harbors 
on  New  York  Bay  or  on  the  Delaware  were 
close  to  the  important  marts  of  other  colonies. 

The  people  were  engaged  almost  exclusively 
in  farming.  Each  farmer's  family  raised  almost 
everything  they  needed  — their  provisions,  fruit, 
and  tobacco — and  wove  their  own  clothes. 
The  towns  and  villages  were  few  and  small. 

The  aristocratic  class,  which  was  always  more 
or  less  vigorous  in  the  other  colonies,  was  of 
very  little  importance  in  New  Jersey.  There 
were  some  gentlemen  farmers  who  were  recog 
nized  as  a  sort  of  aristocracy,  but  class  distinc 
tions  were  not  sharply  marked. 

There  were  not  many  indented  servants,  but 
there  were  a  considerable  number  of  slaves,  and 
these  slaves  were  very  much  dreaded.  Several 
insurrections  were  attempted  by  them,  and  the 
laws  against  them  were  as  severe  as  in  the 
Southern  colonies.  For  murder  they  were 
burned  at  the  stake,  in  the  presence  of  as  many 
of  their  race  as  could  be  collected  to  witness 
the  spectacle.  One  instance  is  recorded  of  a 
slave  condemned  to  be  hung,  who  first  had  his 
right  hand  cut  off  and  burnt  before  his  eyes.* 
In  an  old  account-book  of  Essex  County  there 


*  Meliclc's  "  Old  Farm,"  p.  225. 
389 


Nova  Caesarea 

are  several  entries  of  the  cost  of  wood  for  burn 
ing  slaves,  as,  for  example  : 

"  June  4  1741  Daniel  Harrison  sent  in  his  account  of 
wood  carted  for  burning  two  negroes.  Allowed  cur'y 
O.II.o."  (Hatfield's  "History  of  Elizabeth,"  p.  364.) 

The  colonial  custom  in  all  the  Northern 
colonies  of  entertaining  expensively  at  funerals 
prevailed  in  New  Jersey,  and  we  find  in  the 
history  of  Elizabeth  some  details  of  the  general 
movement  which  checked  the  excess  and  ex 
travagance  in  1764.  Fifty  heads  of  prominent 
families  agreed  among  themselves  to  cut  down 
the  expense.  Thomas  Clark,  a  judge,  who  died 
in  1765,  was  buried  in  the  new  manner,  and 
the  newspapers  reported,  as  a  matter  worthy 
of  notice,  that  there  was  no  drinking  at  his 
funeral. 

The  religious  tone  of  the  colony,  except  in 
West  Jersey,  which  was  largely  Quaker,  was 
controlled  by  the  Scotch  Presbyterians  and 
New  England  Congregationalists,  and  they,  of 
course,  were  strongly  inclined  to  prohibit  amuse 
ments. 

The  province  was  always  disunited,  and 
lacked  the  marked  individuality  which  was  so 
conspicuous  in  the  others.  The  part  near  the 
Hudson  was  like  New  York,  and  the  part  near 
the  Delaware  like  Pennsylvania.  Princeton 
39° 


Nova  Cjesarea 

College,  which  was  established  in  1746,  was 
the  result  of  a  movement  among  the  Presbyte 
rians  at  large,  in  New  York  as  well  as  in  East 
Jersey,  and  was  not  in  the  full  sense  a  Jersey 
institution  growing  out  of  the  natural  inclina 
tions  of  the  people,  like  Harvard  in  Massachu 
setts  or  William  and  Mary  in  Virginia. 

New  Jersey  is  still  divided,  but  the  line  is  not 
the  same  as  the  old  one  which  the  proprietors 
agreed  upon.  The  divisions  are  now  North  and 
South  Jersey,  and  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
from  Trenton  to  Jersey  City  is  supposed  to 
mark  the  division  quite  accurately.  North  of 
the  railroad  is  the  hill  country,  and  south  of  it 
the  flat  or  tide-water  distrift,  as  it  is  sometimes 
called  ;  and  the  people  of  the  two  divisions  are 
quite  unlike,  socially,  economically,  and  intellec 
tually.  Close  to  the  line  the  different  types 
merge,  and  Trenton  contains  both. 


N.  J 


END    OF    VOL.   I. 


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